Refuge
by Madripoor Rose
Summary: Post X2: Help them, Wolverine said. But where are a bunch of hunted mutant teens supposed to go in the middle of the night. Kiotr.
1. Chapter 1

REFUGE

BY MADRIPOOR ROSE

Disclaimer: This is a work of fanfiction done solely for entertainment purposes, not financial gain. These characters belong to Marvel Comics. No copyright infringement is intended.

Author's Note: Canon purists may want to pass this by. This is from the a la carte menu, I'm taking bits from Evolution, Ultimate, 616, and just plain making some of it up to fit the story I'm trying to tell. OC casting: Introducing Mercedes McNab as Irina Vassilov.

In the Grand Gallery of the American Museum of Natural History, Piotr Rasputin craned his head back to look up at the skeletal remains of a tyrannosaurus rex, and nodded again, with greater certainty.

"Da. I think I could take it."

Standing at 6 foot 8, the young Russian wasn't used to having to look UP at a potential enemy. Or at one he was unsure of defeating in unarmed combat. Even if he was joking. He glanced down at his companion as she giggled.

Kitty Pryde tossed her long brown hair and pointed to the informational placard before them. "Peter, the teeth are like eight inches long."

"But it would not be expecting metal when it bit me," he explained, lowering his voice. The museum was fairly crowded for a weekday afternoon, several other school groups in attendance. "Some teeth would break and I would have the element of surprise."

"Moot point," Kitty shrugged. "It's not like you're ever gonna get a chance to fight dinosaurs anyway." She opened her notebook and dutifully began copying down the information on the placard.

Knowing he could copy her notes later, Piotr unfolded the floorplan map he'd printed out from the museum website back at the school.

"Is that a map? Can I borrow it, Pete? We don't have one," Marie Caldicott, who preferred to go by her codename Rogue, called out in her soft southern drawl, as she came around from the other side of the dinosaur with Bobby Drake and John Allardyce trailing behind her.

Smiling to himself, Piotr handed it over. Rogue took the map, turned it around, and around, and looked up with laughing eyes. Piotr had taken the option to print it in his native language.

"Well, Cyrillic is surely a pretty alphabet. We're gonna ditch the rest of the tour," she looked over to include Kitty in the conversation. "Y'wanna go down to the food court?"

Kitty shook her head. "I want to look around some more. This place is just as cool as the Field Museum back home in Chicago."

John snorted at the idea that anyone could think a museum was cool. Bobby elbowed him in the ribs, and Piotr and Rogue just glared.

"Thanks, but I want to check out the gift shop. I don't know if the teachers will give us time there." Piotr collected toys and small souvenirs for his little sister Illyana at every opportunity, saving them up to bring home on vacation.

He showed them the way down to the main food court near the subway station, and the trio moved off. He headed in the other direction, slowing his step so that Kitty could keep up with his longer stride.

The gift shop was almost empty, just a dark haired woman at the register paying for a silk scarf. Piotr went directly over to the children's section. Kitty browsed for a bit, then joined him. She helped him decide between a wind-up plastic dinosaur bath toy and a story book and stuffed animal combo about desert foxes, and Piotr bought the plesiosaur. Kitty tucked it into her purse for safekeeping.

Back in the museum proper, they hurried to catch up on the worksheet. There were three more exhibits they were supposed to view, to be quizzed on later.

"Did you ever come here when you lived in Brighton Beach?" she asked innocently.

Piotr was consulting his map again. "No. I didn't spend a lot of time in museums," he said vaguely, uncomfortable.

He didn't like lying to Kitty, even by omission. But only the teachers knew about his past. His friends knew that he had been born on a remote farm in Siberia, one that was struggling under privatization and the collapse of the collective. That he had left at age ten, brought to the States by a distant relative. In America, he'd be one less mouth to feed, and he could work, earn strong American dollars, hard currency, to send home.

They just didn't know that the family business was a...family...business. Or what his Uncle Dmitri did for a living. Mafiya. The Vassilov family.

As a child, they used him for a lookout while they unloaded trucks and emptied warehouses. Boris took a liking to him, and he became Irina's playmate and bodyguard and boyfriend.

He collected protection money, but had never really had to hurt anybody. Much. One of the advantages of his height and the muscle he'd put on at the end of adolescence, no longer a lanky colt all elbows and knees. All he'd had to do was be very large at debtors, and they would pay up.

Boris had been talking about letting him sell a shipment of Kalishnikov rifles when Professor Xavier found him with Cerebro, and Mister Summers and Doctor Grey came to get him.

Sometimes he wondered if Doctor Grey...did something...to Boris, because he was allowed to leave.

Professor Xavier paid him a little allowance for working in the mansion's gardens. Enough to have a little pocket money, and he still saved up to send most of it home. It wasn't much, but it was honestly earned. And his ill-gotten gains had repaired the barn roof and paid for a new tractor and irrigation system. His parents were still struggling, but no longer in danger of losing everything. And they were very relieved that their son was out of the thieves' world.

The Xavier School For Gifted Children was giving him a fresh start. He no longer had to do questionable things, he no longer had to hide his mutant nature, and was exploring the limits of his organic steel transformation. In steel form, he was seven feet tall and weighed five hundred pounds, and he did not need to breathe, though the instinct to try made him uncomfortable. It dulled his sense of touch and made him clumsy. He could lift more than triple his own weight, and ten year old Jamie Madrox had proven that fridge magnets would stick, on a dare.

If they knew he had been with the Russian Mob, the shy Canadian duplicator wouldn't look at him as a big brother. He would not have friends like Bobby Drake or Kitty Pryde, who aside from their mutations had grown up in families much like those shown in situation comedy television programs.

Kitty would probably be afraid of him. The thought disturbed him. He was the first person she'd met at the school when her parents dropped her off, and since that first day she was always at his side.

Like she belonged at his side...

"Hey, Snuffleupagus here is from your neck of the woods," Kitty announced, stopping in front of the woolly mammoth display, "says here they found it frozen in Siberia. Frozen with food still in it's stomach. Brr! And I thought Chicago got cold in the winter, with the lake effect snow. Do you get lake effect off Lake Baikal?"

"I do not know," he admitted. "It does get bitter cold and the snow can drift very deep."

Kitty flipped open her notebook and took down the information on the mammoth.

They caught up with the rest of their classmates in time for a video presentation on Neanderthal Man. Mister Summers frowned, an eyebrow rising over the rim of his special diffuser sunglasses. Piotr gave him a sheepish one shouldered shrug, and made a point of paying attention. Even opening his own notebook and writing down the main points of the narration. What he thought the main points were. He added a much more detailed sketch of a Neanderthal's sloping forehead in the margins, and the rough triangular wedge of an axehead. It was the artist in him, visual images came to him much easier than words.

He was vaguely aware that Mister Summers had moved away, and glanced up. Mister Summers had gone across the hallway to meet Doctor Grey. She looked ill, pale and tired. Piotr watched her reach up to massage her temples as they spoke, and Mister Summers embraced her. Piotr turned his attention back to the video screen, feeling that he was intruding on a private moment.

He didn't notice when they left. Just a few moments later, there was the familiar and yet still undeniably odd thoughtspeech of a telepathic announcement. Professor Xavier telling them to meet at the bus in the parking lot. The field trip was being cut short.

XxXxXxXxXxX

It took about two hours to make it from New York City to Xavier's School in Salem Center in rush hour traffic. Scott was making much better time. Jean sat back, closed her eyes, and let her telepathic shields flex for a moment, as she had at the museum.

Maelstorm of minds...the Professor's shields smooth and as opaque as a pearl. Scott's love encompassing and warm. The younger children, bright silver flashes of excitement after their day out. Piotr was looking through one of his sketchbooks from his bookbag, a delicate pencil drawing of the Firebird of Russian folklore, shaded in carefully with reds and yellows, oranges and greens. It filled his mind's eye. It was beautiful, it was...

...ancient power my power if i claim it fire and life incarnate eternal light in eternal darkness emptiness alone no more you are mine if i claim you let me let us burn so brightly so brightly eternal and incarnate fire and life you are i am we are...

Shaken, Jean wrapped her shields around herself tightly and opened her eyes. The children...don't think about it, concentrate on the children.

They hadn't been told why they were leaving the museum earlier than planned. Bobby, Rogue and John knew, they had been in the food court when the press conference had preempted regular programming. Professor Xavier planned to announce it after dinner.

The younger children would be all right, they would only understand that something important enough to preempt their favorite television programs had happened.

It was the older children they had to worry about, the ones old enough to understand what this could mean for the future, for the Mutant Registration Act. They were the ones who would be frightened by the news of a mutant involved in an incident at the White House.

The teaching staff...the four of them...would have to reassure the children, and tell them that the government would never blame the actions of one disturbed individual on the whole sub species of mutantkind, that justice would win out over prejudice, and that everything would be all right.

They would have to lie.

XxXxXxXxXxX

Meals at the Xavier School were handled by a local catering company. As part of their standard contract, they used kitchen facilities at mealtimes, cleaned up, and restocked supplies. If the student body ever increased into triple digits, a permanent chef and kitchen staff would be hired.

As it was, the standard menu provided three hot nutritious meals a day. Children were allowed to store snack foods as an earned privilege, and the older children were allowed to prepare their own meals if they wishes, for credit in Household Skills class.

Kitty finished dicing plum tomatoes for her cucumber tomato vinaigrette, scraped them off the cutting board and into her Tupperware container. She drizzled oil and vinegar over the vegetables, put the lid on the Tupperware tightly, and gave it a good shake.

She stuck the vinaigrette in the fridge, then rinsed off the cutting board and paring knife, crossing the large gourmet kitchen to hop up onto the countertop near Piotr. She filched a handful of potato chips before he could crush them into topping for his tuna casserole, and idly swung her legs, drumming her heels against a cabinet door.

"Rogue's a little freaked out by the White House thing. Think Magneto's behind it? Like, maybe he had more followers than the ones at Liberty Island? He'd kinda have to, wouldn't he? And you shouldn't bring everybody on a covert mission anyway. Unless you've never read the Evil Overlord list."

"Which you of course have."

"Yuh-huh. It's a good thing I'm good 'cause if I was evil, I'd be efficient," she quipped.

The humor fell flat. Kitty couldn't help thinking about the Mutant Registration Act and the subcommittee meetings on C-Span. Senator Kelly describing her by power and asking what stopped her from walking into Fort Knox if she felt like it.

The faint impression in the back of her mind that she probably could take over the world if she really put her mind to it bothered her a little bit. But mostly it was knowing that humans were afraid of mutants, so they wanted mutants to be afraid of humans, and the circle never ended.

"Peter," she said in a small voice, trembling suddenly on the verge of tears.

He looked up, and took a step closer, seeing the expression on her face. He frowned in concern. She leaned forward and kissed him.

It wasn't their first kiss. He'd kissed her on the cheek, and the forehead, in farewell. Vacation and parting for Siberia and Deerfield. Last year she'd caught him under the mistletoe during the Winter Dance and made him wait there while she got a stepstool.

It was their first real kiss. His lips were warm and silky against hers. She slid a hand around the back of his neck and let her fingers toy with the dark hair curling over his collar.

He pulled away, murmuring her name, just enough to rub his cheek against her hair. "Katya, Katya, it's all right..."

"It isn't," she sniffed. "I'm trying to be brave, but I'm scared. This is one more excuse for the people who hate us, and it might start up the Mutant Registration Act again, and, and," she gulped air. "and you're going away next fall," she finished in a smaller voice.

Somehow the thought of not seeing Piotr every day was almost worse than being labeled a second class citizen and losing most of her rights.

"Just to art school in the city," he soothed. "Not so very far away that we cannot visit."

Kitty didn't voice her fears. That he would get so involved in his new life that he would forget about her, that he would meet someone else, someone his own age. That he would never look at her the way Mister Summers looked at Doctor Grey, never love her as much as she loved him. That to him she would never be anything more than a younger friend, a tagalong tomboy with a silly crush.

She just held onto him, as hard as she could.

XxXxXxXxXxX

After the announcement and dinner, the children scattered. Some went to play outside, or for walks in the gardens. Others retreated to their rooms. The studious and the seriously in danger of flunking took over the library.

The Common Room and the Game Room were the two most popular destinations. Kitty and Piotr had separated, Kitty going to the Game Room to call dibs on the new Star Wars game and one of the computer stations before someone else got to it. Piotr went up to his room for sketching supplies, knowing that the table in the Common Room had good light until sunset.

He'd been inspired by the museum, and he needed to get the images burning in his imagination down on paper.

A smoky volcano in the background. Pterodactyls in the sky. The foreground filled in with palms and ferns and small dinosaurs.

He was deliberately drawing in a stylized yet realistic comic book form. Smiling a little to himself, he added a busty cavegirl in a fur bikini, carrying a spear. To make it a bit more exotic, he gave her a mohawk trailing down to waistlength beaded rattail braids, and scrollwork armbands.

He paused, and looked over his work. Not bad. It reminded him of the Dinotopia books. Maybe he should try a series of drawings that told a story, if he could think of a story...

He put down his pencil and stretched, taking a look around.

Almost all of the kids in the room were clustered around the large TV, on the sectional sofa or plopped on the floor on large lounging pillows. Some Japanese Anime was on the screen, Piotr didn't recognize the characters.

At least it wasn't The Iron Giant again.

Rogue and Bobby were sitting at the far end of the couch, smiling and giggling as they thumb-wrestled for possession of the popcorn bowl. Gazing deeply into each others' eyes. Sitting as close as they could without touching...

Bobby got a lot of locker room ragging for dating a girl he couldn't actually touch. Piotr considered it a failure of imagination, and considered having a private word with Bobby and offering a few suggestions.

He fell into a pleasant reverie. Irina had been teasing him about his no longer getting to watch the girls dance at the Golden Bear now that they were dating, and offered to make it up to him. She gave him a lap dance, fully dressed, but with years of ballet lessons and dressage riding...she had done things to him through layers of denim that he still dreamed about.

The roar of a motorcycle engine drowned out the DVD soundtrack for a moment. Jubilee, who was sitting on the windowseat and painting her toenails called out, "hey, it's that Wolvie guy bringing back Cyke's bike."

Rogue squealed, jumped to her feet and raced out to the foyer. Bobby, abandoned, passed the popcorn bowl to Dani, and followed.

Piotr rolled his eyes. The Bobby Marie Logan Doctor Grey Mister Summers love pentagon was back in play. Made him feel lucky that all he had to deal with was being the object of Katya's crush. That was difficult enough.

She'd outgrow it eventually, find a nice boy her own age and with less emotional baggage. But right now her feelings were real, and he was trying to respect that. He took puppy love seriously. It was a great gift, to be someone's first love, and an innocent young girl's tender heart was fragile, all too easily broken. He would not hurt Katya for the world.

She was a remarkable girl. Sweet and intelligent, brave, with a wicked sense of humor. She was growing into a lovely young woman.

It would be easy to forget that she was only fifteen years old.

Too easy.

He shouldn't have kissed her. He shouldn't have allowed her to kiss him. She was frightened, and with good reason. No Russian understood how quickly the political winds could shift and what would be lost in that tempest better than a Rasputin. She was frightened, and he was simply something solid she could hold on to.

Her first kiss shouldn't have been a moment of desperate terror. He hoped she counted the brush of their lips under the mistletoe at the dance as her first kiss. That would be a sweeter memory. Even if it had been merely a brief and chaste touch of their lips, unlike...

She'd been sitting on the counter, and wrapped her arms around his neck, hooked her feet around his legs, clinging to him tightly. So tightly that he could feel the small swells of her budding breasts pressing against him as she trembled in his arms.

Her lips had been soft and warm, silken as a rosepetal and he breathed in the sweet lemony scent of her shampoo as he buried his face in her hair, comforting her.

He moistened his lips, realizing he could still taste the peppermint oil in her Burt's Bees lip balm, and then squirmed uncomfortably, realizing something else. He flushed faintly, embarrassed, and got to his feet. Nonchalantly packing up his art supplies and carefully carrying them in front of himself.

Idiot boy, he swore at himself silently. You know it's been a while since you've had any...privacy. Getting yourself all worked up...

He sighed, and headed upstairs to take a shower. A cold shower.

And completely failed to notice that his brief memory of Irina had left him with a fond regretful smile, that it was reliving a simple kiss that had so excited him.

XxXxXxXxXxX

Logan hadn't known what to expect when he returned to the mansion. The one lead Xavier had pulled out of the tangled mess of his memory had proved to be a dead end. Alkali Lake was shut down, cleaned out. No answers there, only more questions.

He'd needed the Professor to read his mind again, dig out something he could work with. A place, a name.

Logan. Wolverine.

He didn't even know if Logan was a first name or a last name.

But the Professor's telepathic help in recovering his identity wasn't the only reason he'd come back.

Rogue.

Marie.

She was waiting for him to come back. That was different, new. In the years since he woke up on the side of that abandoned logging road, he hadn't had a place to go back to. Hadn't had anyone waiting for him. Hadn't had a place he belonged.

It wasn't a home, but it was close enough.

He hadn't got two steps in the door when Rogue came flying down the hall. It gave him a pang to see her pause and tug down her sleeves, tug up her gloves, in mid-charge. Kid shouldn't have to be so careful all the time. Then he had an armload of warm teenager.

He gave her a quick hug, then ribbed her, "Miss me?"

"Not much," she teased back, stepping away and flipping her white streaked hair back out of her eyes. Xavier's School had been good for her. She looked a helluva lot different from the skittish stowaway he'd found in the back of his truck in Loughlin City. It was good to hear her laugh, see her smile. There was more confidence in the way she held herself. And she'd put back on a few pounds her time living rough had burnt off. All in the right places, too. Safe, fed, and happy. The way all kids oughtta be.

Her face lit up again as a boy her age with curly dark blond hair came to the same doorway she'd erupted from. "Bobby," she called out to him quietly.

The boy came over, and Rogue introduced him, full of shy joy and proud possessiveness, the wonder of first love to someone who'd given up on ever having it.

"Logan, this is my boyfriend, Bobby."

Boy shook his hand with a polite, "Nice to meet you, sir." Good, clean-cut boy. Hand was a little cold. Logan tightened his grip a little, and held the boy's eyes for a moment longer than necessary. Using body language to say; hurt her sonny and I'll rip your liver out and feed it to ya with onions and hot sauce.

He flexed his fingers as the kid let go, trying to shake off a chill that bit bone deep. Must be the boy's power.

Footsteps on the stairs above, and a warm contralto voice greeted him, "Logan. Just in time."

He looked up as Ororo and Summers came down the stairs.

"We need a babysitter," Summers smirked at him.

"Babysitter?"

"Jean and I have to make a pick-up," Ororo explained.

"And I'm driving the Professor to see an old friend," Summers finished. "We need a responsible adult to stay with the kids."

Logan was sure there was an insult in there somewhere, but it had been a long ride and he was too tired to dig it out.

"Hey, half of us are old enough to babysit," Rogue protested. "There's only like twenty kids here and nine of us are teenagers. It'll be easy."

Logan nodded, and pulled the keys out of his jacket pocket, tossing them to Summers. "Bike needs gas."

The keys came flying right back. "Get 'er filled up. Professor's Downstairs if you want to see him before we leave."

Logan pocketed the keys and headed for the elevator. Home. What was that saying? That it was a place that would always let you in when you went there? He could feel the weight of the keys in his pocket as he walked.

The Professor fed him the same psychobabble about letting the memory resurface in it's own time as the flatscan headshrinking quacks he'd already seen. Logan wasn't so sure of that...but since the Professor stirred his head up, he knew something was floating to the top.

He'd been having nightmares. Couldn't remember anything about them when he woke up, at least nothing that made any damn sense.

Terror. Heat. Pain. Blood. Screaming. Dark endless hallways. Running. Maybe it would make more sense, maybe if he remembered more. Maybe.

The babysitting wasn't so bad. Rogue caught up with him, he told her some tall tales about the trip to Alkali Lake and back. The kids were pretty much gathered in two rooms. They'd already been fed, and now they were watching TV, playing games, or studying. Quiet, well-behaved. Around eight the older kids started chasing the younger ones upstairs. At ten, the older kids said goodnight.

Awake and alone, Logan took over the big screen TV and flipped channels for a while. He watched the news, more yapping about the blue demon attack. Watched for sports and weather. He flipped through the channels again, then did a patrol. Checked the ground floor exits and the alarm system, then headed upstairs, listening in on the occupied floors. Just checking to make sure the older kids weren't taking advantage of the situation.

He couldn't hear or smell anything suspicious, so he hit the rack.

And woke up a few hours later, gasping for breath. Pain. The smell of hot metal. Faces in the shadows, watching. Watching him. Running.

Logan was starting to get sick of this.

Two o'clock in the morning, and he was wide awake. And thirsty.

He got up and went downstairs. Muted electronic babble from the Common Room caught his attention. Did he turn off the TV? He thought he had...he stopped in the doorway and leveled a medium glare at the sandy haired bespectacled ten year old in front of the tube.

"Shouldn't you be asleep?"

"I don't sleep." The remote was on top of the TV. The kid blinked and the channel changed.

"Okay," he continued on his way to the kitchen, and found Bobby at the table eating ice cream from a pint carton. "doesn't anyone sleep around here?" he muttered, irritated.

"Apparently not."

Logan opened the fridge and peered blearily at the contents.

"Got any beer?"

"This is a school," the kid pointed out, sounding amused.

"Got anything other than milk, soda, juice and water?"

Bobby looked at him for a long moment, then pointed to a row of cabinets running along the high ceiling. "Pete's vodka is in the third cabinet."

Logan stared at him, then went and looked in that cupboard. Yup. Nearly a full bottle too. "Pete's vodka?" he repeated.

"Piotr's eighteen, Russian, and Mister Summers said it was safer to keep a bottle here because this one time Pete snuck out to the Auger Inn and got drunk and beat up a biker gang. He only has a supervised shot on special occasions now."

Oh, that Pete. Logan casually walked back to the fridge and snagged himself a Pepsi.

"So. You and Rogue, huh?" He sat down at the table. "How do you, uh..."

Boy actually blushed a little. "We're...working on that."

Logan took a swig of his soda pop. What the hell else did you talk to teenagers about? "You like going to school here?"

"It's great. Y'know, not having to hide our powers. My parents think this is just a prep school."

It was easy after that. Kid wanted to talk, all Logan had to do was make sympathetic noises at the right time and listen. He might get the hang of this responsible adult crap after all.

In a lull in the conversation, he heard a noise. A heavy footstep. More. "Stay here," he ordered, and went to investigate.

Two men. Black Ops combat gear. Automatic weapons. "You picked the wrong house, bub," he snarled, and lept.

At the same moment, an earsplitting howl rang through the late night silence.

XxXxXxXxXxX

Theresa Cassidy's scream woke everybody in the mansion. Codenamed Siryn, the nine year old redhead was able to emit a sonic blast that rivaled the legendary bhean sidhe of her native Ireland. If it wasn't for her training, special soundproofing, and the general architectural excess of the Xavier ancestors, she might have woken most of Salem Center.

Piotr sat up, clapping his hands instinctively over his ears. Jamie Madrox startled, fell out of bed, and scattered all over the floor.

Piotr threw his covers back and swung his feet over the side of the bed.

Stepping over Jamie, Jamie, Jamie, Jamie, Jamie, and Jamie on his way to the door, he marched down the hall to the stairs and went up a flight to the girls' floor.

Maybe it had just been a nightmare, or maybe one of the other boys had taken their teachers' absence as invitation to play some stupid prank. Either way, it was much too late for that kind of noise.

The scream faded into silence as he approached. He opened the door, and for an instant couldn't understand what he was seeing. Kitty's bed was empty. She roomed with Theresa since her phasing power could protect her from the sonic subharmonics. Two heavily armed men in black stood over Theresa's limp form. Piotr armored up as the first man turned, and his lip curled up as a tranquilizer dart clattered against his organic steel chest and fell uselessly to the floor.

He reached out, grabbed a man in each fist, and cracked their heads together, stunning them, then threw them into the wall.

And right through it, through plaster and paneling. Piotr winced as they landed back out in the hall. Anger always did make him forget his own strength. Transforming back to flesh, he bent over Theresa's bed. He could not rouse the child, found her pulse slow but steady. A dart was sticking out of her bare arm. He pulled the dart free, gathered the girl up protectively, and stepped out through the wreckage.

It seemed like everybody was up and running around in a panic now. The regular emergency drills were for fire, not armed incursion by hostile forces.

Automatic weapons fire sounded downstairs, almost drowned out by the increasing thrumm of hovering helicopters. "Chort," Piotr swore to himself, then raised his voice. "Come with me!"

He led all those willing to follow down the hall to one of the secret passages, and spotted Pyro headed for the stairs.

"John," he called out to him.

"Pete, you seen Rogue and Bobby?"

"No."

"Right. We'll meet by the boathouse," and John disappeared.

It figured that the boy codenamed Pyro remembered fire drill procedure.

"Help, Pete, I cain't get the door," Sam Guthrie was already at the secret passage, pushing uselessly at the entrance. "It's stuck!"

He passed Theresa to him, and gave the trigger a solid thump. The panel slid up obediently. They all froze as there was a burst of gunfire and a scream from around the corner.

Then Logan appeared, carrying Jones. Jones was unconscious. Jones didn't sleep, he was probably up watching TV when the men got in. Jones never slept. Piotr wondered what being drugged was doing to the poor kid. Was he still aware, and paralyzed?

"Take the kid," Logan was already tossing Jones into his arms as he spoke.

Piotr caught his eye. "I can help you."

Silent communication passed between the two men. Then Logan nodded at the kids still clustered around him. One or two were crying quietly. "Help them," Logan said simply, and headed back into the fray.

Right. "Come on," he'd get the children out and safe.

He led them down the hidden stairs, keeping them moving, quick and quiet. They reached the tunnel. The emergency lights were on, lighting the cinderblock passage with dim gray light. They ran, putting distance between themselves and the house. The concrete floor was cold under bare feet.

The tunnel exited in a fake hillock in the woods by Breakstone Lake. There were lockers here, lockers they'd passed during the fire drills.

"Wait here a moment," Piotr ordered as Sam started to open the tunnel hatch. He took a quick headcount.

Kitty wasn't with them. Neither was Bobby, Rogue, or John. Jubilee was missing, as was Roberto DeCosta, Artie Maddox, Danielle Moonstar, Ray Crisp, and Rahne Sinclair.

Piotr tried not to panic. There was another escape tunnel to the south. They were probably all with Mister Logan. They probably went out that way, and John had remembered about meeting at the boathouse. They would circle back around the house, and join them.

Piotr had to force himself to believe that. He had to believe it or he would abandon the children and go back for Kitty.

Piotr resolutely turned his back on the tunnel. He heard Amara whimper that she was cold, and glanced at the skimpy baby-doll pajamas the girl wore. He started going through the lockers. They had to be here, in an escape tunnel, for a reason.

His faith in the Professor did not fail him. Packaged sweatsuits, in every size. The same brand the school used for gym class, but these were curiously unlabeled with the Xavier encircled X logo. He passed 'em out, setting aside the one labeled with his XXL Big And Tall size.

Tabitha Smith, one of the more practical girls, possibly because she admitted to a background not unlike his own, had opened another locker and was passing out sneakers. "Whoa," she exclaimed, holding up a pair of sneakers that obscured her face. "Size 13? Here's your stompers, Pete."

He took them gratefully, and dressed before opening more lockers. Vaguely aware of Sam and Tabby making the kids give each other privacy.

In one locker he found a cellphone, an ATM card in the name of John Smith with the PIN number on a postit note attached to it. A spare visor for Mister Summers, and a holstered 9mm semiautomatic and a spare clip.

Piotr looked at the gun for a long moment, bit the inside of his cheek, and took it.

"All right," he fastened the holster around his ankle, and pocketed the rest of the items. "Let's go."

A nearly full moon lit their way to the lake boathouse. It would also make it tougher to evade capture. They reached the boathouse and milled around, waiting.

"Pete?" Sam lowered his voice so the younger kids wouldn't hear. "What're we gonna do?"

"We wait. For the others, see if anyone else made it out." Kitty. God...please...Kitty. "If noone comes, we get to safety. I know someone who'll help, hide us."

They waited, as long as they possibly could, as long as it was safe to wait.

Noone else came.

So Piotr made his phone call.

XxXxXxXxXxX

The phone was ringing. Irina Vassilov sprawled asleep in the middle of her king size bed, rolled over and over to the nightstand and sat up, pushing sleep-tangled honey blonde hair out of her eyes so she could see the clock. She groaned. Middle of the night phone calls were never good news.

"Hallo," she answered, and yawned, reaching under the covers with her free hand to tug at the satin skirt of her nightgown, bunched up under her hip and pulling taut across her legs.

"Irina, it's Piotr..."

"Piotr? Shto...what happened and how much bail money do you need?"

He chuckled a little at that. "Not bail money but I do need your help."

She'd missed him terribly since he'd gone upstate to go to school, though she was glad that he'd gotten out of The Life relatively unscathed. Piotr was her only friend. There were a few girls she hung out with at school, but there is something important you had to know to understand Irina, and it was this: She was very aware of who and what her father was. She had grown up in an ocean of power and fear. This made her very careful, and very kind.

Piotr reported what had happened at the Xavier School in a few terse words, and it had her almost spitting with rage.

"Soldiers in the night," she said bitterly.

"Is familiar, da?" Piotr asked, with grim humor.

"Da. Hide yourself, they may be searching. We'll come for you all."

"You're sure?"

"Papa is in Vladivostok," she snorted, "and I am allowed to have a sleepover if I wish. Be careful, Petya, and make your way to the road. We're coming."

"Irina, I..."

"I know. Go, Piotr. We'll be there soon."

She hung up and rubbed at her eyes with the heels of her hands, mind racing as she made her plans, then lifted the receiver again. Yuri first. Yuri she trusted, and he could get other things in motion while she made arrangements here.

XxXxXxXxXxX

Piotr managed to herd the kids closer to the road with a minimum of tears and hysterics. There was a small gate set into the wall here, a service road for landscapers and servants, from back when the mansion was built in the early 1900s. They huddled together in the underbrush and waited. They could see lights in the air back up at the school, the helicopters in the distance. Piotr tensed, feeling the weight of the gun.

Sooner or later the soldiers would realize that they were missing, and start searching the grounds. They might be able to evade troops on foot for a couple of hours, but the helicopters...

Tabitha's power was offensive. So was Amara's. Jamie might be able to cause some confusion...Sam could ram them...and he had the gun. It wasn't much of a plan. He hoped it wouldn't come to that. Irina was sending someone. If they could just stay hidden, and hold out long enough.

It seemed an eternity before a large sized RV came creeping down the service road. It stopped a few yards off, and Piotr felt weak with relief as he recognized Irina as she climbed out and stood in the headlights, peering into the trees lining the road.

"It's all right, these are my friends," he called out to the cluster of younger children, and led them out of hiding.

Piotr greeted Irina with a quick shoulder-clasp hug, and grinned at Auntie Olga, who was driving the RV. Smart choice, the Vassilov housekeeper was a gentle, motherly woman that would help with comforting the younger children.

His eyes widened slightly at the third member of the rescue party. The kids convulsively moved back a step toward the edge of the road as he came out of the shadows, and Jamie tripped, tripleting.

"Yuri?" Piotr exclaimed, incredulously. The burly figure dressed in black pulled a ski mask down and adjusted it.

"Fight fire with fire, boy." the former KGB agent laughed. "I'll go have a look at your school, see what there is to see. Maybe I fetch out a few more of your friends."

Yuri disappeared into the shadows, and Piotr began loading the kids onto the RV, very gently tousling Jamie's hair after the boy collected himself. He could see the question in Irina's eyes, and silently promised her an explanation later.

Auntie Olga fluttered around Theresa and Jones, still out cold, as they were brought into the RV and taken back to the bed. "Oh, the poor little dears, come, come, lay them down here..."

XxXxXxXxXxX

Tabitha carefully set Theresa down on the bed, then made her way to one of the bench seats, muttering to Piotr as she passed him, "Geez, Pete, you called your Grandma?"

Piotr was moving back up to the front, pausing to fasten seat belts and pat shoulders, murmuring reassurance. Tabby's eyes narrowed a little as he stopped behind the passenger seat with the blonde chick. The blonde's hair was in a thick braid down her back, and she was wearing blue jeans and a coral-orange spaghetti strap tank top, beaded and embroidered with flowers. The fashion statement was pretty much, 'I have big boobs'.

Part of being a successful con artist was being able to read people, read their body language. That was one thing that her old man taught her. Tabby watched Piotr and the blonde chick.

Watched the way they stood so close. Watched the way they looked at each other. Watched them smile. Watched Piotr reach out with a fingertip and trace the chain of the silver heart locket she wore.

"Kit-Kat, I hope you're safe, but I'm glad you ain't here to see this," she muttered under her breath as the couple turned to address the group."

XxXxXxXxXxX

"This is my friend Irina," Piotr announced. "I haven't seen her since I started at school, so noone should know that we know each other. We're going into New York and staying at her apartment until we can figure out what to do next."

"My father's top security man is staying. He will watch, for any other students who made it out, and for your teachers' return. If any of you want to call your parents, you can do that when we get home. I think we should get going, before we attract attention. Everyone belted in? Let's go."

She took the driver's seat, and they started off into the night.

The roads were quiet at this time of night. Piotr felt like he was holding his breath until they got out of Salem Center. "No roadblocks or checkpoints?" he asked quietly.

Some of the kids had fallen back to sleep. Exhaustion and terror. Irina had put the radio on low.

"Nothing like that. This was definitely black ops, covert stuff. Piotr...that boy fell and split into three. He's a mutant, like you?"

He'd risked armoring up in public once. A drive by shooting by one of her father's business rivals. They were eleven, walking back from the comic book shop. If there was one thing to be said about the relentless pragmatism of the Mafiya, or at least Boris' part of it, there was little room for prejudice. All that mattered was if you were useful.

"We all are. That's why they came for the school."

"Bastards! Idiot racist bastards," Irina hissed. "You'll be safe with us, Piotr. You are all under my protection for the duration."

"And what if the duration is the rest of our lives?" Piotr asked bleakly.

XxXxXxXxXxX

To Be Continued.


	2. Chapter 2

REFUGE

BY MADRIPOOR ROSE

Chapter Two

She was silent for a moment, considering the question. "You are under my protection. First things first. We go home and wait and see. If nothing changes, you go to the dasha, the cabin, and we forge papers for everyone."

Piotr sat back and tried not to worry. The future...he was too numb to think that far ahead. Irina had a plan, that was enough. Kitty. She was out there somewhere. Maybe the soldiers had her. Maybe she was alone, hiding, afraid.

He wanted to hit something.

He wanted to go back, but the children needed him. He'd accepted that responsibility when he'd taken Logan's order to help them.

He could hope that she was with Logan and the others, that Yuri would find them.

Traffic was light at this time of night, it made bringing the RV into the city easier. Under other circumstances, Piotr might have laughed at the look on the night doorman's face as the RV pulled up in front of the building and they all got out. Discretion was part of the job description, but this would flap the most unflappable.

His jaw dropped and hung open for a full minute before he swallowed and schooled his expression. "Good morning Miss Vassilov. Mister Rasputin, good to see you again, sir."

"Good morning, Bernard." Piotr adjusted Jones in his arms and carried the unconscious boy into the art deco appointed lobby, Irina at his side, the two of them trailing gray sweatsuited children like ducklings following their mother as they went over to the bank of beaten bronze elevator doors.

Auntie Olga was taking the RV back. There were surprised whispers from some of the kids at the luxury of their surroundings. The Xavier School had accustomed them all to a higher standard of elegant decor, but this evidently wasn't what they were expecting.

"The guest rooms are made up, Piotr. Let's get the sleepy ones back to bed," Irina suggested.

"Yo, Pete. Jones and Theresa are gonna need someone to watch 'em, and I'm pretty wired. Got a room for three?" Tabitha called out.

"Papa's room."

Piotr led her down the hall to the master bedroom. They set their sleeping charges down on the faux mink bedspread. Tabitha took another look around the large room, the heavy, expensive mahogany furniture...everything done one step off tasteful toward tacky.

"So Peter...Irina Vassilov? As in Boris 'The Butcher' Vassilov? Pop wouldn't work a grift anywhere near his patch," Tabitha crossed her arms and frowned at him. "So how you know this girl?"

"I used to work for Boris," Piotr confessed.

"Scared o'you," Tabitha sounded impressed, but still teasing. More seriously, she asked him, "We didn't just jump from the frying pan into the fire, did we?"

"No. Irina is not her father's daughter, and Boris is out of the country on business."

"Cool. I'm worried about Jones being out this long. He never sleeps, I dunno if he can wake up. Without the Doc or the Prof, what are we gonna do?"

Piotr hated having to say this word again. "We wait. He must have been tranqued first, he should recover first. If he doesn't...we'll have to try stimulants. Ice water and smelling salts before drugs."

"Pretty much what I figured," Tabitha sprawled down across the foot of the bed.

On his way out the door, Piotr opened up the entertainment armoire doors and tossed her the remote control.

He went to the guest rooms, reassuring kids, telling them to try and rest if they couldn't sleep, wiping away tears and tucking in blankets.

The sun was rising when Piotr staggered back down the hall, intending to check on Jones and Theresa again. Irina had been passing out pillows and blankets to the children camping out in the living room. She caught Piotr, latched onto his arm and spun him around.

"You need to lie down before you fall down."

"I need to..."

"Your children are all sleeping, and those that aren't have each other. Close your eyes for a couple of hours. Who knows what tomorrow will bring? You'll do yourself no good if you collapse. Come, lie down."

Irina could be frighteningly sensible sometimes. He balked a little as she opened her bedroom door. "Irina, your room?"

"Is the only other room with a king size bed. Unless you'd like to fold yourself in half on a sofa?" she reached up and gave him a little push between the shoulderblades, switching to Russian. "You used to be eager to sleep in my bed, Piotr Nikolievich."

"Because you used to ride me like a Cossack pony," he responded in kind.

He sat on the edge of her bed and put the cellphone on the nightstand. He pulled off his sweatshirt, and tossed it onto the pink velvet wing chair nearby. His shoes followed, and the gun went into the nightstand drawer.

Irina had gone to her dresser, and unfastened her locket. He stopped, and watched her open the egg box and carefully drape the chain over the little display hook.

The easter egg wasn't real, it was a reproduction of the real one at the Met in the Stark Collection.

Enameled new apple green and applied with silver swags of laurel leaves suspended from bows set with cabochon garnets and pearls. A spring bouquet of enameled forget-me-nots and snowdrops decorated the center panel.

The egg was fake, but the locket, a silver heart with the enamel bouquet duplicated, was not. It was the only Imperial Present that stayed in the family, the only one Great Great Uncle Grigory hadn't drunk or gambled away, payment for the mutant monk using his powers to heal the dying Romanov heir.

"You still wear my locket?"

"Force of habit," she agreed, carefully clasping the lid of the egg shaped box. "I'll give it back to you when you leave."

"No, it was a gift," he protested quickly.

"It is an heirloom. It should go to Illyana, or to the woman you marry." There was no recrimination in her voice, no bitter undertone meant to remind him that when he gave her the necklace they thought they would be married someday. They'd parted on good terms.

Whether that had been Jean Grey's telepathic influence, or a childhood of violence and loss teaching Irina to let things go, Piotr would never be certain.

She came over as he stretched out on the bed, turning slightly to the diagonal with the unconscious ease of practice. She perched beside him for a moment and told him, "Try to get a little sleep. They'll be all right. Children are stronger than you think. We survived our childhood, eh? Things will be better in the morning."

She left the room. Piotr lay back and looked up into the familiar shadows, breathing in the faint scent of Casma perfume instead of the lingering trace of oil paint and gym socks that permeated the room he shared with Jamie.

No one was watching him now, no one needed him to be strong. So he let himself cry.

XxXxXxXxXxX

Yuri sighed to himself and looked up the tree. The girl in pink pajamas glared back down at him from astride a thick oak branch.

It had taken him a while to run the girl to ground. They were at the back of the estate, far from the house. The soldiers seemed interested only in the house, and not chasing down errant escaped children.

"Come down from there, girl. I'm not with those at your school," he called to her.

"You're Russian. I heard two of them talking, they didn't have accents," she said slowly.

"You know Piotr Rasputin, yes? Siberian boy, almost as tall as that tree. He called a friend for help and I am a friend of that friend."

She eyed him suspiciously. "Piotr's name is in the school records. If you really are a friend of his friend, tell me something that isn't."

Yuri smiled approvingly. "He dotes on his little sister Illyana. He calls her his Snowflake."

The girl jumped off of her branch and floated to the ground in front of him. She put her hands on her hips. "If you turn out to be a bad guy, I'm gonna be real upset," she warned him.

XxXxXxXxXxX

Piotr got three hours of sleep, and then Jones woke up. Tabby came and got him out of a confused dream of moving crates around an enormous geodesic dome.

"It was horrible! I knew the men were in the house, and I couldn't warn anyone or do anything. I couldn't talk or move!" Jones complained. He frowned at the still slumbering redhead on the other side of the bed. "Is that happening to Theresa?"

"No, Terry's just asleep. Your mutation makes your body chemistry different, the drug reacts differently to you," Piotr explained.

"Did everybody get away?"

Piotr closed his eyes. "No."

Tabby told him about the raid, the escape, and who was missing. "...so we're hanging out here at Pete's old girlfriend's place until one of the teachers shows up to tell us what to do."

Irina stuck her head in the door. "Good morning. There's breakfast in the kitchen. Tabitha, if you want, I can sit with Theresa while you eat."

"Nah. She'll scream if she don't see a familiar face when she wakes up, and you don't want this girl screaming. But thanks."

"I'll bring you a tray."

Having this many people to cook for was sending Auntie Olga into a sort of feeding frenzy. The smell of sausage made Piotr's stomach growl as they approached the kitchen. Jamie Madrox was complaining, "This oatmeal looks funny."

"That's because it's kasha," Piotr accepted a seat, a cup of coffee, and a loaded plate. He hadn't eaten like this since the last time he was home, and he was surprised at how hungry he was.

He felt a little guilty about pigging out, with the fate of so many of their friends in question, with Kitty still missing...but with Auntie Olga ladling more kasha into his bowl, serving eggs and sausage and freshly baked bread with honey, and urging everyone to 'eat, eat, you're all growing boys and girls,' he found himself obediently scraping his plate clean and sitting back with an overstuffed belch.

After breakfast, Irina collected sizes and a few of the nervous kids who needed to be kept occupied and went on an expedition to Target for a change of clothes.

"Bah," she waved away Piotr's promise of repayment, "I spend more on shoes. We'll stop at Big and Tall and get you some things as well."

The shopping party left, and Piotr retrieved the cellphone and checked it out.

A couple of numbers were labeled by codename. Cyclops...Mister Summers. Storm...Miss Munroe. He tried those and got the out of service area recording. He tried Angel, not recognizing that codename, and found himself speaking to Warren Worthington's private secretary. Unfortunately, Mister Worthington was in London and couldn't be reached at the moment.

Piotr thanked her, and hung up. No help there, but at least he knew how he'd gotten the Worthington scholarship to art school. He wondered what the reclusive billionaire's mutation was.

XxXxXxXxXxX

Yuri was kinda scary, Kitty decided. But not a bad guy. Or at least if he was a bad guy, he was on their side.

He'd brought her out to the service road, where there was a black sedan parked on the side of the road, and told her he was taking her to Piotr and the others.

She wasn't getting any kind of Afterschool Special vibe off getting into the car with him, and anyway she could always phase. "Tell me what happened. You were awake, yes?" he asked as they drove through the quiet streets, headed for New York.

"I couldn't sleep," Kitty agreed. She'd been worried about the news, the anti-mutant hysteria that seemed to be getting worse with every update. Trying to distract herself by thinking about the kiss. "I opened my eyes, and there were two men in our room. They were wearing black, and they had guns and military stuff. So I...I can go through solid objects...I threw myself down through the floor, dropped into the library. There was another man there, so I went out through the wall and ran away."

Yuri grunted, and she paused, ashamed. "When there's a fire drill, and you get out from that wing of the mansion, you're supposed to go wait at the gazebo in the rose garden. I waited there for a while, but nobody else came. So I circled around to the lake and the boathouse 'cause that's the other fire drill place, and noone was there either. I guess you already came and got them already. I was going back toward the house when I saw you the first time, and ran off again."

"You're good at that."

"Running away when my friends are in trouble?" she asked guiltily.

"These secret agencies..." Yuri spoke softly. "They rely on shadow and silence. Someone must survive, stay free, to be witness. You are twelve? Thirteen years?"

Kitty sat up straighter. "I'm fifteen!"

"Still little girl, but brave little girl. I've seen grown men freeze, too afraid to move. You, you run. Do what you are supposed to do in emergency. And then go back to see if you can help your friends. You could curl up in ball, cry, be helpless. You don't. You are very brave."

Kitty didn't feel very brave, but she unconsciously lifted her chin and squared her shoulders. She didn't know Yuri, but he reminded her a little of Mister Summers, in that he had an air of indefinable competence. Mister Summers didn't give praise that wasn't deserved, and something told her Yuri didn't either.

They pulled up to a fancy downtown apartment building. The doorman didn't blink at the sight of Yuri escorting a barefoot teenage girl in pink pajamas, but there was a woman in a red Chanel suit with a Pomeranian on a leash, who both sniffed at them when they got on the elevator.

Sam Guthrie threw open the apartment door. Half the school was in the living room. Kitty found herself surrounded, and hugged, and patted repeatedly.

Jamie, Sam, Amara, Tabitha, Jones, Theresa...

"so scared..."

"...don't know where the teachers are, or the..."

"Did you see..."

"..woke up and screamed..."

"KATYA!" and there was Piotr, coming out of a hall and darting around the furniture.

The kids moved out of his way quickly, and Kitty gasped as Piotr gathered her up in his arms, and swung her around, beaming with joy and relief. "Hi Peter," she giggled a little breathlessly, and then her eyes went wide as his mouth covered hers.

Whoops and catcalls rang out from the other kids, but Kitty barely heard them as she melted into the kiss. Piotr drew back all too soon, but his eyes were shining with love. It sent warm shivers through her to her toes.

"My Ekaterina...I thought I had lost you..." he said, his accent thicker, voice rough with emotion.

She pulled her hand around from the back of his neck, and stroked his cheek. "I'm right here."

He kissed her again, very lightly on the lips, then once on the forehead, and set her on her feet.

Only then did Piotr seem to realize they had an audience, and he blushed bright pink.

XxXxXxXxXxX

It wasn't until he saw Kitty alive and well, standing on the Aubusson rug in her pajamas and bare feet, that it really hit him. Just how afraid he'd been that he would never see her again. It shook him to realize how much he cared for her, how much...

How much he loved her.

He loved her.

Int hat thunderstroke moment of epiphany, he swept her up and kissed her, thoroughly, much to the entertainment of their classmates.

Under the hoots and catcalls, he heard Sam tease, "It's about time Petey Pureheart got some puh--Tabby! Ow!"

He set Kitty down, blushing. He'd just french kissed her in front of...well...almost everybody. Piotr breathed a sigh of relief as the ensuing Sam versus Tabby scuffle drew some of the attention away from them.

"Hayseed, I can't believe you were gonna say that! I never claimed to have no class, but man, oh man..."

"What? It was a joke! A pun, sorta. I can't believe you put a popper bomb down my shirt. I may be invulnerable, but damn, they sting!"

Piotr met Yuri's eyes. He knew it was a dangerous thing to say, but he had to say it. "I owe you one."

"You owe Irina. She pays the bills," Yuri reminded him. "I'm heading out again."

Piotr turned back to Kitty. "You've been up all night, you must be tired, hungry..."

"I could eat," Kitty grinned at him.

He knew he was giving her a dopey smile in return.

Katya. He'd been fighting his feelings for so long. Because of the age difference. Because she deserved better. But now it was out in the open. Life was too uncertain, the raid on the school made him realize that. Whatever there was between them, whatever there could be, he wanted to explore it.

But not now. He sent her off to the kitchen for Auntie Olga to fuss over, and went back to trying to keep morale up.

First of all, he'd better separate Sam and Tabby before something got broken.

XxXxXxXxXxX

Piotr led her through the palatial apartment to a kitchen that rivaled the one at school, and introduced her to a plump and motherly woman he called Auntie Olga.

"You were out there all night? Poor girl, and you are thin as two sticks as it is. Sit, sit and eat..."

Kitty found herself loaded up with hot cereal, bread and honey, and bananas and orange slices.

"It's very good, ma'am, thanks," Kitty said between bites. "So you're Piotr's aunt? I didn't know he had any family in the states other than his uncle."

The older woman laughed, sitting down at the table with a cup of tea. "Oh, no, I am not Piotr's aunt. I work for the Vassilovs, Miss Irina and Young Piotr grew up calling me Auntie Olga, and now I am Auntie to everyone."

"Oh," Kitty hesitated, and then lowered her spoonful of kasha back to the bowl, stirring it up a little. Miss Irina? Who grew up with Peter. Who Peter had never mentioned.

Suddenly she wasn't very hungry.

"So Piotr and Irina grew up together?" she asked, hopefully feigning disinterest.

"Da. Piotr came to live with his uncle, Dmitri Novykh, when he was ten. Dmitri, he works for Mister Vassilov. Piotr was always a big strong boy, even at ten. He helped unload trucks for his uncle. Mister Vassilov was impressed, and Irina did not have many friends here, so he invited Piotr to come over to play with her," Auntie Olga smiled fondly. "They were together constantly until Piotr went upstate to go to your school."

Kitty felt sick. Piotr had grown up with this girl. And he had never mentioned her once in the two years they'd known each other.

Girlfriend. Definitely.

But she was pretty sure Piotr wouldn't have kissed her like that if he still liked Irina. Piotr had kissed her in front of everybody, and she almost bit his tongue, she was so shocked when he slid his tongue into her mouth during the kiss. That wasn't a friends reunited kiss. That wasn't a worried about you kiss. That...that was a kiss. A grownups kiss.

She needed to talk to Piotr. Alone. After breakfast. More cheered, she dug back into her bowl of kasha.

XxXxXxXxXxX

The shopping trip was surprisingly fun. The kids, doing something so normal, began to relax a little. They bought clothes, underwear. Simple outfits of teeshirts and jeans. It took a good sized chunk out of her allowance, but as she'd told Piotr, she'd blown more on shoes. They picked up toothbrushes for everybody, while they were at it, as well as a few other little comforts and necessities.

Luckily, the classic '67 Cadillac convertible she drove had lots of trunk space. They had plenty of room for their purchased without burying any of the passengers under shopping bags.

They got back to the building and went upstairs.

Fresh chaos erupted as they handed out the clothes and things, and then a bathroom schedule suddenly had to be worked out. She could hear whispers. Yuri had returned with a girl named Kitty and left again. Piotr had kissed Kitty when he saw that she was safe. They were trying to keep their voices down, but in Irina's life hearing something you weren't supposed to hear was a survival skill. One of the many lessons her father paid for was a deaf teacher who'd taught her to read lips.

So Piotr had found a new lover. Irina wondered how she should be feeling about that. Possessive jealousy was not in her heart. They'd parted well, and a while ago. It was not surprising that he had moved on. The fact that she had not had more to do with her limited choice of companions than with pining for the loss of him.

But she wanted to meet this Kitty, and see if she approved of the match.

The girl was probably still in the kitchen. Irina glanced over to Piotr, who was sternly informing a six year old boy with light blue hair that he definitely had to shower and brush his teeth. She slipped out of the living room and went to see.

There was a girl sitting at the table with Auntie Olga. She had long chestnut brown hair and a slender, dancer's build. Petite and delicate, the kind of girl that always made Irina feel like a big blonde ox. Pretty as well.

"Kitty?" she asked, just for confirmation.

"Uh-huh. Irina?"

"I am Irina. I'm glad Yuri found you, your friends have been very worried."

"Yeah. Thanks for taking us in."

There was a moment of awkward silence.

XxXxXxXxXxX

"We are arranging for showers and clean clothes. Or if you'd like to get some sleep..." Irina offered.

"No. I'm way too wound up to sleep now. I'll probably crash early tonight. A shower and some clothes sounds great though." Kitty's smile was a little strained.

Irina was the same age as Piotr, blonde, busty, and beautiful. A total Barbie doll come to life. Her worst nightmare.

"We brought some extra toothbrushes and underthings. And I can loan you some clothes."

"Blouse is gonna be loose," Kitty muttered under her breath, glancing down at her fairly flat by comparison chest as she got up.

Kitty picked up a couple of packages from the stacks on the coffee table, picking out her sizes, while Irina called out, "Is anyone using my bathroom right now?"

"Nope," Tabitha called back, "just the guest suites."

Piotr, who had been tying shoelaces for the blue haired boy, looked up with a hunted expression.

"Good. Kitty's going to get cleaned up, and we're going to have a little chat." Irina smiled like a wolf.

Kitty frowned at that, until she saw the look of utter panic on Piotr's face. She looked at Irina, who turned and winked where Piotr couldn't see.

Kitty began to smile, and it was as sweetly threatening as Irina's. "Yes. I think Irina and I should get to know each other better. After all. We have. So much. In common."

They made it all the way down to Irina's bedroom before looking at each other and giggling.

"Ah, we should not torture the poor boy so," Irina sighed, smiling at her.

"We were evil," Kitty agreed solemnly.

"And I come by it too naturally," Irina shook her head. "I hope we can be friends, Kitty."

"You're Piotr's ex-girlfriend." Kitty needed to say it out loud.

"And you're his new girlfriend. I am not jealous, Kitty, and I assure you, you have no reason to be. Piotr and I said goodbye a long time ago."

Kitty eyed her warily, not certain if she could believe her. Kitty knew that she wouldn't give up so easily.

Her innate honesty led Kitty to confess, "I'm not exactly his girlfriend. Yet. I like him like that, and I think he likes me back, but I'm fifteen and that's kinda freaking him out."

"It would," Irina agreed thoughtfully. "Piotr can be surprisingly proper. Give him time."

"Yeah. I'm afraid I'm gonna have to give him three years," Kitty sighed.

Irina laughed. "Well, let's get your outfit picked out so you can clean up. I think I have a few things in the back that will fit."

Kitty's eyes widened as Irina showed her the walk-in closet. "Oh wow. It looks like Vogue blew up."

"Anything on that rack should fit, might be a little loose. Try on anything you like."

XxXxXxXxXxX

Piotr tried not to stare down the hallway as Kitty and Irina walked away together, and he swallowed nervously. He hadn't gotten a chance to talk to Kitty about the kiss, he hadn't told her that he was in love with her yet. And he'd never told her about Irina.

Irina was part of the past he'd been trying to put behind him.

He hadn't mentioned Kitty to Irina either, except as one of the school children unaccounted for after the raid. To be fair to himself, he hadn't realized just what she'd meant to him until he saw her again safe and sound.

Kitty and Irina had obviously been talking. To each other.

Piotr knew he was in trouble.

He sent Tobias off for his shower, and Irina came out, and motioned for him to join her on the terrace. There was a fine view of the park, and the old cast iron bench he remembered, facing the flowerboxes. There were only a few fading blooms.

"So. Kitty seems nice." Irina's smile was less unnerving now, warmer. "How long have you been dating her?"

"We aren't...Kitty...she..." Piotr blew out a breath and started over. "She's so young. I've fallen in love with her, Irina, but I tried not to."

"She's not a child, Piotr. She's fifteen."

"She's innocent. The worst things that's ever happened to her were discovering that she was a mutant, and now this attack," Piotr spat out bitterly. "Do you remember the worst things we'd seen by the time we were fifteen?"

Irina looked away. She'd never been sheltered from reality, from the fact that her family fortune was founded on misery. Piotr had broken bones with his bare hands. There was blood on her own.

"Is there no room in your artist's palette for shades of gray, Piotr? You are a good man. There's no cruelty in you. When you worked for my father, you did what was necessary, and no more, and took no joy of it. Even Papa could see it, and that's why he gave you to me. He knew I'd not see your like again, and it was good for me to have someone I could lower my guard with, and be just a girl for a little while longer, and not a mafiya princess. Do not name yourself unworthy of love, Piotr. Not to me. Who holds real monsters leashed by my word."

Piotr looked at her, still troubled, but a wry smile turned the corner of his mouth up. "Perhaps I am being a tad melodramatic."

"A common failing among Russians. It explains so much of our history. The girl adores you, Piotr, and you don't need to put her on a pedestal to even the difference in height." Irina tilted her head slightly and smiled. "It all works well enough lying down."

"She's fifteen, Irinushka."

"And next year she shall be sixteen, and the next year seventeen, and the next..."

"Three years," he sighed.

Irina shrugged, and gave him a devilish smile. "You don't have to be that good. There are other ways to...enjoy a girl's company, as you well know. You were patient enough with me while I got over my nervousness, and we had fun, da?"

Piotr ducked his head and blushed.

That was when the doors opened, and Sam stepped out. "Uh. Pete? You better see this. Mister Logan and Bobby, Rogue and John are on GNN. Pyro blew up some cops."

Inside, the large screen TV was tuned to the Global News Network. They were showing a helicopter shot of an upper middle class neighborhood in chaos. Police cars were burning in the spacious front yard of a three story white colonial, news crews and neighbors milled around in the street. The crawl at the bottom of the screen read: Mutant Terror In Quincy Mass...No known connection to the assassination attempt...One of the suspected mutants is Robert Drake, age 17, eldest son of William and Madeline Drake...

Piotr flinched, unable to imagine what Bobby must be going through. The scene shifted to Bobby's most recent class picture, then a family photo with his parents and kid brother.

"...unconfirmed reports of an unidentified aircraft landing in the street, in which Robert Drake and three unnamed accomplices fled..." the reporter's voiceover was droning on and on.

"Miss Munroe and Doctor Grey," a couple of the kids cried out, almost in unison. "They had the Blackbird."

Tabby hushed them.

The descriptions of the unnamed accomplices confirmed it. The man with the metal blades in his hands. The girl with white streaked brown hair. The boy who threw fireballs. Logan, Rogue, and John had been with Bobby Drake, and had gone to his parents. And then something happened to set Pyro off, and Doctor Grey and Miss Munroe came to get them.

"It is good news, yes? To know that three of your teachers and three other students are safe and free?" Irina asked.

"We still don't know about the Professor and Mister Summers. And six students are still missing." Piotr was worried.

"But if Doctor Grey is free, she can probably find Mister Summers. And they'll figure it out," Kitty called out.

Piotr turned, and froze. His mouth fell open, but he couldn't think of anything to say, so he closed it again.

Kitty was wearing a simple deep blue outfit, with a wrap top and skirt that came down in handkerchief points. Her hair was twisted up in a neat chignon and held with cloisonne combs. It was too subtle an effect for Piotr to notice, but Kitty didn't usually bother with makeup, so the borrowed smudge of smoky eyeshadow and Clinque Black Honey lipstick combined with the clothes and the hair to make her look elegant, sophisticated, and about twenty-five years old.

"Irina lent me a few things since I got here after she went to Target," she explained.

"Whoa. Smokin' hot, Kit." Tabitha encouraged her.

Amara Aquilia squealed with jealous delight. "Oh gods, is that a Eulalie Original? Betsy Braddock wore it in green in her first French Vogue shoot three years ago!"

Irina, Tabby, and Amara began talking fashion. Sam shook his head disgustedly at GNN, as the talking heads kept repeating the same information in different ways meant to disguise the fact that they didn't really have a clue what had happened at the Drake house. He changed the channels, flicking through programs.

"Ooh. Stargate SG-1. And it's Fallen," Kitty sighed as the villages found an amnesiac Daniel Jackson.

Piotr glanced at the screen and muttered distractedly, "I never liked that episode."

"You and Irina were out on the terrace? Want to show me the view?" Kitty offered.

Piotr nodded, and led her outside, carefully closing the doors behind them for privacy.

Kitty looked in at all the faces looking back and groaned. "At least our live action teen angst soap opera is helping to keep some of the kids distracted from worrying."

"Better than reruns of 90210," Piotr agreed ruefully. "I am sorry Katya. I did not mean for...for all this to be happening all at once."

"I talked with Irina, while we picked out this outfit. She's really nice. And she explained a few things."

"Irina and I cared for each other, but it ended when I left." Piotr told her, warily.

"That's what she said. That it was more like you were really good friends, friends who fooled around and stuff. 'Cause her dad and your uncle were trying to fix you up. That Irina was gonna have all these golddigger guys around her since they got rich, but her dad knew you, your family, and knew you were such a sweetheart you'd be a good first boyfriend for her, for practice. It's weird, but it kinda makes sense."

"It was complicated," Piotr agreed.

"So that kiss..."

"This kiss?" Piotr caught her chin and tilted her face up to meet his stoop.

Time stopped, for a little while.

"That kiss," Kitty licked her lips, a little breathlessly. "Guess it means what I think it means."

"I love you, Katya. I was...blind to it, for a while. Until I saw you weren't with us in the tunnels. Until Yuri brought you to us safe and whole. I love you."

Kitty looked up at him, eyes shining with unshed tears. One tumbled over the brink, rolling down her cheek, then another fell. "Oh Peter! I love you. I've loved you from the first moment I saw you."

Piotr cupped her face gently in his hands, and wiped the tears away, then he lightly kissed her again on the lips.

"So when we go back to school, we're dating? I'm your girlfriend now, officially?"

"Da. Even if we don't go back to the school."

Kitty's jaw set. "It's gonna be okay, Peter. It just wouldn't be fair if it isn't. Not now. We're gonna go back to school, and everything's going to be all right again. We're gonna go out to the movies, and out to eat and hang out at the mall. And go to the school dances. When you start at the Art Institute, you'll come home weekends and we'll go for walks by the lake and you can show me your sketchbook."

Piotr's mouth quirked at this determinedly normal litany. They'd already been doing all of those things, but now it seemed terribly romantic, seen through the eyes of love. "And that differs from our lives now in what way?"

Kitty beamed at him happily. "Oh, there's gonna be a whole lot of kissing and necking and making out in there too."

"Some kissing and necking," Piotr gently corrected her. "I mean to take things slow, Katya. Makes me feel a little less like a dirty old man robbing the cradle."

"You're not that much older than me, you know."

"Three years is enough, on this side of eighteen. We have time, Katya."

"I hope we have time." Kitty looked out over the park, and the cityscape beyond. New York went about its business, oblivious to the coin of fate rolling along on the edge. Heads triumph, tails disaster. Just waiting to see which way it fell. "What were you going to say before? If we can't go back to school?"

Piotr gave her a lopsided smile. "How do you feel about farming?"

That made her laugh a little. "I'm the kind of girl you'd bring home to meet your parents, huh?"

"You're the kind of girl I see my future with. Whatever that future might be."

"Can we go in and announce we're going steady?"

"If you like."

The announcement was met with calls of congratulations, a snorted mutter of 'duh, about time' from Tabitha, and indifference. Sam had settled on the Stargate rerun, and most of the kids were watching it. Piotr went to take his shower.

When he came out, Jamie told him that Irina wanted all the older kids in her father's office.

Sam, Tabby, Amara, Kitty and now Piotr made themselves comfortable on the leather sofas facing the large desk. Irina moved an antique globe and perched on a corner of the desk.

"We need a plan," she stated bluntly. "Yuri's called in. Most of the soldiers have departed, leaving only a few to guard your school. My father has contacts in various arms of the government," she paused, and Piotr mentally listed the FBI, DEA, ATF, SHIELD agents, and senators on the Vassilov payroll. "and I've got them discreetly looking into the raid, if they can do so without compromising themselves. See if we can get a warning on what comes next. I think we should wait a week, and if the political situation is still uncertain, we'll smuggle you into Canada. My father has a cabin up north. I can have papers forged for you, and you can stay there as long as you like. That's the next step as I can see it."

Sam shook his head. "I can't believe this is really happening. That we're really talking about being on the run for the rest of our lives just because we were born mutants."

"Life ain't fair, Hayseed." Tabby commented grimly. "You just figuring that out NOW?"

"It's a good next step," Piotr agreed. "But if it comes to that, we need to know we can fend for ourselves. We can all have new papers made that lie about our ages, so that we can work. But what about the younger children?"

"Yeah, we don't split up. One big unhappy family now." Tabby looked thoughtful. "Between part time jobs at Wonderburger and me and Piotr's...more marketable skills...we oughtta be able to make ends meet."

Irina nodded. "It is always better to plan for the worst and hope for the best. So we are settled on this as a worst case scenario?"

The kids looked at each other, and each lost a little more of their innocence as they nodded in agreement.

XxXxXxXxXxX

They ordered pizza despite Auntie Olga's nutritional objections. Irina reminded her that pizza was comfort food for American youth, and she dug through the DVD library for movies appropriate for all ages. She stayed away from action movies, on the grounds that they weren't escapist enough.

They settled in for the night, and the younger children didn't notice the older ones slipping away now and then to check GNN on the television in Irina's father's bedroom. They were still reporting the same information on the incident at the Drake house, and speculation on the mutant attack on McKenna. At nine, they were going to have a geneticist, Doctor Henry McCoy, on Crosstalk to discuss the Mutant Question.

Piotr watched for a few minutes, disgusted, and decided The Secret Garden was a better idea. He went back to the living room, and the seat on the sofa Kitty was saving for him. He tried to stop thinking for a while and just watched the movie. Kitty snuggled up beside him, and they kissed a little during the slow parts.

Night fell, and they all settled back into the new sleeping arrangements, in their own freshly laundered pajamas. Irina put Kitty in the room she'd been using, and moved to a couch in her father's office. It was a rough night. It didn't matter how hard everyone was trying to pretend that everything was going to be all right. The older kids slept fitfully, and some of the younger ones had screaming nightmares.

Thankfully not Siryn.

Eventually the needs of growing bodies won out, over restless minds, and sleep came to them late. They slept in, 'til mid-morning. The early birds started getting up around ten, to another elaborate breakfast prepared by Auntie Olga.

Several of the children wanted to call home, so Irina arranged for the delivery and disposal of an untraceable phone for that purpose. Piotr had showered and shaved early, dressing in the black jeans and garnet red shirt Irina had bought him. Many of the children were still in their sleepwear.

Irina had the New York Times and the Daily Bugle and was working her way through the newspapers after handing off the comics pages to Jamie, Siryn, Jones and Tobias.

"Is my uncle in town?" Piotr asked, lingering over coffee.

"Nyet. He went with my father. Something about a deal with one of the Vladivostok families, smuggling their diamonds in the vodka we import legally through one of the fronts." Irina answered absently, turning a page.

"That sounds profitable," Piotr frowned, and reached up to rub his forehead as a headache seemed to clamp across his brow. He gasped as the pain intensified, until it felt like his head was split open and someone was trying to remove his brain from his skull with a dull grapefruit knife. The pain consumed his universe, he was aware of nothing else...and then as suddenly as it had come, it stopped.

He was lying on the kitchen floor, looking at a shattered cup on the tiled floor. Brightly patterned china shards in a puddle of coffee. Irina kneeling beside him, patting his cheeks lightly and begging, "Piotr! Please Petrusha, please wake up..."

"shto?" he whispered, swallowing against a dry mouth. "What? What happened?"

"You...you had a seizure." Irina said carefully, and paused. In the silence, Piotr could hear crying and confusion. He had to get up.

In a minute.

When he was sure his head wouldn't fall off.

Irina licked her lips. "All of you. Had seizures. All the mutants."

Piotr closed his eyes and swore. "Telepathic attack," he explained, and levered himself up, straight-armed. Irina helped him stand, and righted the chair he'd knocked over when he went down.

He made his way to the chaos in the living room.

"...Cerebro, was that Cerebro?"

"The Professor looking for us? Maybe it's over, maybe we can go home..."

"...killer hangover..."

Kitty had gone to get dressed. Piotr glanced at the hall, then at the scattered children.

Tabitha looked up from rocking Siryn in her arms, and read the indecision in his eyes. "Go on Pete. Go to her, we got this one."

Piotr glanced around again, and went.

XxXxXxXxXxX

To Be Continued


	3. Chapter 3

REFUGE

BY MADRIPOOR ROSE

CHAPTER THREE

It was a pretty guest room, painted a cheerful bright daffodil yellow, with a simple white quilt on a dark Mission double bed. Kitty sat up in the middle of the bed, still in her pink pajamas, though borrowed jeans and a teeshirt hung on the doorknob.

Her knees were drawn up, and her loose chestnut brown hair veiled her face as she shook with the force of her sobs.

Piotr went to her, sitting on the edge of the bed.

"Katya, Katya, I am here. It's all right, there's my girl..." he soothed. She straightened up, only to fling herself into his arms. He turned, awkwardly bringing his legs up, stretching out on the bed and allowing her to bury her face in his shoulder.

He patted and rubbed her back, combed through her hair with his fingers, and made wordless comforting noises until the tears slowed and she looked up at him.

"Peter...that was Cerebro."

"Da." He wiped tears away and kissed her cheek, tasting salt and sorrow.

"That was Cerebro on overload," she brushed her lips against his.

"Da."

"That's...not good, is it?"

"No," he kissed her. "It is not."

They lay there for a little while, holding each other, kissing lightly. Piotr kept running his hand through her loose hair, and nibbling at her full lower lip with his own. The cold, shocky terror Kitty had felt was quickly being replaced by a warm, breathless feeling. Especially as Piotr licked her just below her ear, and took her earlobe gently between his teeth.

"Peter?" she asked, panting a little. "Are you comforting me, or are we making out?"

He pulled back and looked deeply into her eyes. "Do you want me to stop?"

Kitty considered it and announced firmly, "I want you to take off your shirt."

Piotr smiled, and pulled his shirt over his head, tossing it to the floor. He deliberately stretched, flexing, making muscles ripple. He rolled onto his side, tucking Kitty close beside him.

She ran a hand down his chest, then reached up for his arm. He obligingly made a bicep for her, and she squealed, wrapping her hands around his arm and finding her fingers wouldn't meet. "OoOoh!"

"You like my muscles, yes?" he asked, just a little smugly.

"That's almost the first thing I noticed about you, the first time I saw you," Kitty agreed. "That you were so huge and kind of neat-looking. I never saw anybody so buff and ripped in real life before."

They kissed a few times, and then Piotr offered, "the first time I saw you I thought you looked like a fawn. So delicate and graceful, all long legs and big dark eyes. Beautiful."

They kissed again, and then again. More passionately, tongues touching tentatively. Growing bolder with each kiss. Kitty kept tracing light, aimless patterns on his bare chest and stomach, kitten-scratching with her fingernails, fingertips gliding over smooth skin and sculpted muscle.

Piotr had his arm draped across her, and he rubbed her from shoulder to elbow, every so often. His fingertips barely brushing the curve of her breast, every so often.

Kitty giggled, nervously, and traced the defined abdominal muscles with a fingertip.

Piotr began to nuzzle at the nape of her neck, and Kitty let her hand slide down to the hard bulge in the front of his jeans. She groped him clumsily, patting and stroking and squeezing gently. Piotr moaned approval, and began rocking his hips, rubbing himself against her palm.

Encouraged, she unfastened the button at his waistband, pulled down the zipper, and slipped her fingers into his fly. She could feel him better through the thin cotton, but she had barely measured the length of him when Piotr jerked back with a yelp, almost falling off the bed.

"Nyet," he panted, chest heaving. "Not...not yet. Katya, stop!"

"It's okay, Peter," she reassured him with a quick kiss. "I want to," she giggled with nervous anticipation, and stroked him again, eagerly. "and wow, you really want to."

"Daaaaaaaaaaah," Piotr's agreement faded into a sigh of pleasure as she continued to tease him with her fingertips. He caught her by the wrist and pulled her hand away. "Katya, we can't. This is not the proper time or place."

He was almost trying to convince himself. He was excited. It had been so long, and Kitty was staring up at him, trustingly, flushed, eyes dark and liquid with desire, hair tumbling over her shoulders soft as silk. Wanting him, and all he had to do was tug at her pajama pants and she would phase so that he could pull them free and then they would...

No.

No.

He closed his eyes and shook his head, trying to shake off the mental image, and the tactile memory of her warm and gentle fingers.

Kitty was looking at him with confusion, and a spark of anger ignited in her eyes. "We might not get another chance. Peter, they have Cerebro and the Professor, or another telepath, and they're learning to use it. All Cerebro does is find mutants. They're going to hunt us down. The others are probably already dead."

"You don't know that."

"You don't know that they aren't," she countered. "I don't want to die, Peter." Her voice trembled. "Not when we've just...we haven't..."

Piotr sighed softly, and gingerly did up his fly. "We are all dying, Katya. Every second of every day from the moment of our birth brings us closer to our natural end. What matters is how we live."

"We should live our lives to the fullest?" she tried, smiling wryly.

"We should," he agreed. "But we cannot do this, Katya."

She pouted. "What do society's stupid rules matter when you're doomed?"

"You don't know that we are doomed. Perhaps that was the Professor looking for us, and the soldiers changed Cerebro's settings. If we did this, I would not be able to live with myself. I know that you are willing, Katya, but it would still be statutory rape."

The ugly words hung in the air between them.

Kitty heaved a sigh. "Gee, I wish I was older."

"As do I," he paused, and his dry and slightly offkilter sense of humor surfaced unexpectedly. He let his voice deepen, go as dark and soft as black velvet. "But we do not have the time or the privacy I would prefer now, in any event. When you are eighteen, my Ekaterina, and we make love, I wish to take my time about it. I want to romance you, seduce you on satin sheets scattered with rose petals. I will know every inch of your body, I will lick every inch of your body. If it does not offend your vegetarian sensibilities, I will eat caviar from between your breasts."

She was looking at him with very wide eyes. Her lips parted, and her breath quickened. He hid a smile.

"When I take you for the first time, I will go as slowly and gently as I can bear. I don't want to hurt you, deflowering you, though I am large. And we will make love again and again, until we are both exhausted, sated, and our voices hoarse from screaming with pleasure."

Kitty's eyes were slightly glazed. "...ohmigawd..."

Piotr leaned close again, captured her chin and kissed her lightly, sweetly, on the lips, and drew back, tracing her full lower lip with his thumb.

"Have I never told you that my family name was once Novykh, Katya? Rasputin was meant as an insult to my infamous ancestor, for it means debaucher. He took it as his own. And I am a Rasputin. Why trade the anticipation of our night of ecstasy for a quick, unsatisfying screw?"

Kitty closed her eyes and shivered. She was blushing almost the same shade of pink as her pajamas. "Um, yeah, uh, I, yeah. We should...you're right. We should wait." She sidled off the bed. "I'm um, I better get dressed before the bathroom's taken."

Gathering her clothes, she fled out into the hallway through the closed door.

Piotr leaned back on the bed and waited for his arousal to fade, shutting his eyes. "And when I can speak to you of lust without scaring you, Katya, you will be ready to come to my bed."

XxXxXxXxXxX

Kitty stopped on the other side of the closed door, and took a deep breath, blowing it out slowly in a gasp.

"Whoa..." she sighed aloud.

She had thought that she was ready to go farther than kissing. So sure that this might be their last chance to be together, to give herself to him. And she'd been frustrated and confused and angry when Piotr refused her.

But then he started telling her what he wanted to do with her, when she was older, when she was ready, when they could do everything together, explore each other like that. His voice was like warm honey. She wondered, with a sudden spark of jealousy, whether he had already done any of that. The thing with caviar. With Irina. Or maybe he'd just been reading the romance novels Tabitha left lying around the mansion, the ones with the good paragraphs highlighted in purple.

It had given her conflicting feelings, like she wanted to pounce on him, and hide under the bed, both at the same time.

And suddenly she wasn't so sure she was ready, after all.

Kitty lingered over her shower, not really wanting to face Piotr again yet. Or anyone else. At least until she was sure she wouldn't blush redder than an apple. She tried running the water cold because of all the cold shower jokes, but that was just uncomfortable, so she turned the heat back up and carefully read the little aromatherapy label on the spearmint and eucalyptus shower gel. Clearing the mind and warding off evil spirits sounded like just what she needed right now.

She washed her hands thoroughly, scrubbing the one she'd touched Piotr's thing through his underwear with. She made sure both hands were very clean, then finished bathing. She dried her hair and put it up in a neat ponytail after getting dressed.

Piotr wasn't with the kids in the living room when she came out. GNN was on for the hourly update. For once they were catching up on news in the rest of the world. A ferry between Madripoor and the mainland had sunk, and two hundred people were missing, presumed drowned. Critics were panning Alison Blaire's movie debut in the semi-autobiographical Dazzle, new troop movements along the Latverian borders. The world kept turning.

Irina was walking across the living room when she cried out, and crumpled like a rag doll. She siezed, tremblers starting in her arms and legs, hitting harder until she was jackknifing on the floor like a landed fish.

"Irina!" Tabitha yelled. "Cerebro again, dammit."

"Olga," Sam started for the kitchen and the service rooms beyond. "Auntie Olga was gonna run some laundry."

Kitty hurried to their hostess, and helped Tabitha hold her still. Irina's eyes were glazed, blank and mindless with dull animal pain, then she went still and took a deep, shuddering breath.

"Ow," she said, meditatively. "That was just as unpleasant as it looked."

She sat up slowly, pushing tangled honey blonde hair out of her eyes. She looked Tabitha and Kitty in the eyes. "This Cerebro...this is the machine at your school, in enemy hands, that your professor uses to find new students. To find mutants."

It wasn't really a question.

Kitty answered her anyway. "Yes."

Irina wet her lips, and tried to swallow. "I think I arrange transport to Canada. Soon."

The three girls met each others' gaze grimly, and Tabitha and Kitty helped her up.

Sam was coming out of the kitchen, supporting Auntie Olga, who was unsteady on her feet.

Kitty went out onto the terrace, and leaned against the railing, looking out at the trees and the cityscape beyond, then closed her eyes and lifted her face up to the sun.

In the last 48 hours, she had survived an armed assault on the school, hid out in the woods, met Piotr's rich ex girlfriend, almost got her brain smooshed by Cerebro, and offered Piotr her virginity while feeling him up. Now she was going to be smuggled into Canada, the next step toward a life on the run. She'd never be able to see her parents again. She'd have to use a new name. And every time she closed her eyes at night, she'd be afraid she would see a man in black camouflage standing over her when she opened them again.

48 hours ago...she'd been bored. Kitty began to laugh, with the slightest tinge of hysteria to it.

XxXxXxXxXxX

Piotr lay back and waited for the urgent ache to fade, trying to keep his mind blank...occupied with anything else. He'd come very close to taking Kitty, making love to her, and the lure of lesser pleasures still called to him. Her impulsive questing fingers would be fuel for his fantasies to feed on...he could close his eyes and let his own fingertips retrace her path...

But not now. He really didn't want to have to explain why he was changing the sheets. It didn't take long to cool his ardor.

Just a stray thought that he was glad none of the resident telepaths were around. It was embarrassing enough to pass the Professor or Doctor Grey in the hall first thing in the morning, trying not to think about the wet dream he'd had, or think about the special sketchbook he kept hidden between the mattress and box spring and only took out when he was absolutely sure Jamie was sound asleep.

But the reason why there were no telepaths to be paranoid about intruded like a bucket of ice water.

Piotr got to his feet, adjusted himself and checked his fly, and went back out to the living room. That was when he learned that Cerebro had been reset to normal humans and activated again, that both Irina and Auntie Olga had been affected.

He settled down to talk to a crying Jamie, and tried not to worry that Kitty had been right.

XxXxXxXxXxX

Meanwhile.

At Alkali Lake.

Jean could take care of herself, Ororo had to trust that, as much as she hated leaving the other woman with Magneto and Mystique.

She hurried through the dim and dark corridors, heading for the cells Mystique had shown her on the blueprints. Kurt Wagner kept pace with her, tail lashing back and forth anxiously as he ran.

They reached the cells, set into the floor along a walkway. The first six were empty, the seventh held the children.

"Jubilee," she called out.

"Miss Munroe!" There were excited cries from the other children. "We're down here!"

"I know. I'm sending a friend down to get you out." She looked at Kurt. He nodded, and disappeared with a bamf! of displaced air rushing in to fill the void of where he'd been. Startled squeals from the cell announced his instantaneous reappearance below.

"Miss? Miss Lady, Ma'am?"

Ororo looked into the adjoining cell. A blond boy, ten years old and dressed in child-sized surgical scrubs in red and black. He wasn't an Xavier student.

"Could ya let me out too?"

"Of course. What's your name, child? What are you doing here?"

"Wade. Getting 'sperimented on, mostly. The doctor guy told my foster parents it was 'cause of my cancer and they maybe could cure it. The others here...before the 'speriments killed them, they said it was 'cause we were already sick, we were expendable."

Storm's mind went blank with rage. On the surface, clouds darkened, gathered, and it began to rain. Kurt appeared beside her with the first of the children. Teleporting with a passenger was a strain on Kurt, he needed to rest between rescues. That gave them plenty of time to talk to the kids, and hear about the raid on the school from more points of view from those who'd lived through it.

They were worried about their friends, she was able to reassure them a little, that Bobby and Rogue and John were waiting in the Blackbird, that Logan had seen the rest of the students out through the emergency escape tunnels under Piotr's protection.

Jubilee snorted. "Where'd they go, though? Petey ain't exactly inconspicuous. Especially in his undies, yum."

Ororo caught her eye and shook her head slightly. "Piotr's taking care of the other students," she repeated, and prayed that it was true.

Once everyone was free, they hurried back to the rendezvous point, falling short of it when the faux-Cerebro was activated, dropping all the mutants in their tracks. Ororo came to a few seconds later, the boy Wade shaking her. "Miss, don't die! I don't wanna win the deadpool again and be the last one alive the docs didn't even shoot you up or nothing, please, somebody don't die!"

She sat up, gathering him close and cooed, rocking him, calming him down. She ran a hand through his fine blond hair, frowning as several strands came loose in her fingers. They said they would cure his cancer...Jean would have to examine the boy back at the mansion's medical lab.

She abandoned the plan to meet back at the control room and headed straight for the faux-Cerebro. They found Scott and Jean there, Scott supporting a limping Jean.

"Jean, what's going on?"

"The Professor's inside. With another mutant, a very dangerous telepath. There's some kind of illusion. Magneto's reversed the Cerebro. It isn't targeting mutants any more."

"Who is it targeting?"

"Everyone else."

"We have to get in there."

"Opening the door now will kill the Professor."

"Kurt, can you get me inside?"

"I have to see where I am going, or else we could wind up inside a wall."

"I have faith in you."

Kurt wrapped his arms around her and began to pray quietly. There was a nauseating lurch---an odd sensation of falling sideways---and a sharp and sulfurous smell. And suddenly they were inside the Cerebro chamber.

The Professor wasn't there. Just a little girl with reddish brown hair and mismatched eyes, one green, one brown. She stood barefoot on the platform, in a simple white nightgown. She looked innocent. Harmless. She smiled. "Hello."

Ororo ignored her. "Professor. Charles, can you hear me?" she called out.

"Are you looking for your friend? He isn't here."

Ororo took a threatening step forward. Kurt caught at her shoulder. "She's just a little girl."

"No." The mismatched eyes betrayed her. Ororo knew Jason Stryker was looking at her through them, through the illusory avatar. "It isn't. Nothing you see here is real."

"I've got my eye on you," the girl chirped menacingly.

Ororo glared back. "Kurt, it's about to get very cold in here."

The temperature dropped like a rock. The girl began to shiver as frost beaded on the walls, silvering over the tiles.

"It's so cold, you're hurting me," the girl cried out. Storm ignored her, and let it grow colder. She pulled the moisture out of their breath and used it to make snow. The girl cowered against the blizzard winds and wailed, "he's going to be so angry..."

And just like that, the illusion was shattered. Two wheelchairs were parked, face to face, the Professor and Jason.

"Now!" Ororo shouted, and Kurt grabbed hold of the Professor and vanished, as she hit the control for the door.

There was an ominous rumbling echoing through the facility as they fled toward the spillway entrance. Wolverine appeared from one of the side corridors. "Trust me darlin', you don't want to go that way."

As if to underscore his words, the rumble increased to a dull roar, accompanied by a earthquake that knocked a few of the children off their feet.

Following Logan's lead, they made it to the surface...on the other side of the ridge. But to their mingled horror and relief, the Blackbird was coming. Skimming barely above the treetops, wobbling. One of the children was trying to fly, relying on a handful of simulator sessions as their only experience.

The Blackbird made a hard three point landing, dropping like a brick from twenty feet above ground. No permanent damage was done, but the plane landed in the soggy, boggy mud and stuck fast.

Ororo ushered the children inside and took a moment to lightly ruffle Rogue's hair as she passed. "You did good."

XxXxXxXxXxX

Scott deposited Jean in the seat nearest the door, and hurried up to take Rogue's place at the controls. The engines sputtered a few times, and wouldn't start.

As they all found seats and buckled in, Bobby asked suddenly, taking a headcount, "Where's John? He went to look for you guys."

Jean cast out telepathically, and closed her eyes, wearied beyond measure by what she found. "He left with Magneto and Mystique. He's decided to join the Brotherhood."

It shocked them all into silence.

"Cyke." Logan's voice was tight and urgent.

"Yeah."

"Dam's buckling."

"Yeah."

"Alkali Lake's coming down on our heads."

The Professor was busy trying to calm the children. Jean knew what she had to do. Using her teke to glide through the air, she slipped out of the plane. Bracing herself against a sapling, she reached out for the water and blocked it, lifting the struggling Blackbird with the last of her strength. She couldn't hold back the water forever. But she could hold it for just long enough.

The Blackbird came free of the muck, thrusters blowing clear, and the aircraft moved under its own power.

Goodbye, Scott. I love you. I'm sorry. I love you all, Jean sent telepathically, and the deluge broke through her telekinetic shield, engulfing the valley.

There is something in us all that denies oblivion. In her death throes, Jean blindly sought out some last desperate chance to survive.

Jean Grey saw a light at the end of the tunnel, and it was a phoenix.

Omnipotent, incorporeal, the energy creature known as the phoenix force had been watching Earth for a long time. Fascinated by these strange animals, humans. It began looking for a body it could inhabit, to experience. The failures were called spontaneous combustion. Phoenix began watching the different ones, the mutants, in the hope that one of these could contain it.

And in Jean Grey's psychic death-cry, the Phoenix found an invitation, and a body it could wear.

XxXxXxXxXxX

Perhaps it was a bit cold-blooded, but Xavier telepathically surpressed the grief and shock his students were feeling at the death of one of their own. Though it pained him to do so, they could not afford Scott breaking down now. Stryker's insane mutant genocide plan might have been thwarted, but he greatly feared the current political situation and that events had outpaced him. There was time enough to mourn their dead later. What mattered now was the fate of the living.

They brought the Blackbird back to the mansion, Xavier scanning the premises from the air and carefully putting the remaining soldiers to sleep before landing. One of Xavier's spare wheelchairs was kept in the Blackbird hangar beneath the basketball court. Scott helped him transfer into it, numbly, and they checked the damage to the school while collecting the soldiers to be placed under guard.

Things.

Things that could be replaced. Some of the furniture had been destroyed. Bullet holes in the walnut paneling. Plants and panes of glass in the conservatory and greenhouse. A hall flooded and left to soak, Bobby blushed and confessed to the ice shield that he'd made. Bloodstains in various places. A gaping hole in the wall of Theresa Cassidy and Kitty Pryde's room, mute testament to the folly of enraging the Colossus.

At last, Xavier entered the Cerebro chamber with a touch of unease. He examined the mechanism carefully for signs of tampering and found none.

He still hesitated over donning the headpiece. That was the true horror of the late Jason Stryker's particular brand of psi...it was how Jason had driven his mother to suicide.

Down the rabbit hole, peeling layers of reality like an onion, never quite able to trust the world around you was real.

That way led madness.

Xavier pulled the headpiece into place and let Cerebro open the world to him, searching for the children.

He found them quickly, a bright cluster of mutants together in the city, lightly skimming surface thoughts to be sure. His children, safe and sound. Relief washed over him, as well as bemusement at the children's plans to flee, and at the latest romantic entanglement among his charges.

Piotr.

Professor! Where are you?

Back at the school. Are you unharmed?

Only frightened, sir.

You've done very well taking care of the children, I'm proud of you, Piotr. If we may presume upon Miss Vassilov's hospitality for another day...we'll be coming to collect you and Kitty in the Blackbird momentarily for a small errand in Washington.

Yes sir. Is everybody all right? The kids the soldiers took?

The...children...are all right, yes. We'll be there shortly.

Piotr opened his eyes again with a sigh...letting out a breath he hadn't even realized that he was holding. A breath he'd been holding since he'd stepped into Kitty and Theresa's room.

From the happy relieved murmurs of the other kids, Professor Xavier had communicated with everyone, privately. Irina had a vaguely shellshocked expression after her first experience with thoughtspeech.

"That was your Professor?"

"Da."

"Interesting man."

"Isn't he?"

Kitty was bouncing a little. "A small errand in Washington. That means a mission, right?"

Tabitha rolled her eyes. "Yep. Now, with all that's going on down in DC, I wonder why the Prof would want the Man of Steel and The Kat Who Walks Through Walls for a mission?"

"I dunno. Think we'll get uniforms? Because Peter, in leather pants?"

Piotr, who happened to be facing the wrong way, turned in time to catch six pairs of adolescent female eyes examining his butt.

He blushed a little. "Katya is very good at sneaking into places. I can walk through walls too, only it is much louder," he joked.

There was a great deal of speculation on the subject, how the Professor had escaped, where they had been taken and what happened to the others, how long Pyro was gonna be grounded for blowing up Bobby's front yard, whether they were going back to the school or going on the run with their teachers in charge, and why Piotr and Kitty were going to Washington.

And then the doorman was calling up because Miss Munroe and Mister Logan were there.

Irina buzzed them up. The younger kids swarmed Ororo, eager for the comfort of her motherly concern. Logan flicked a glance around the apartment, the kids, and Irina, who had tactfully retreated to straighten up comic books and DVD cases on the coffee table.

The Wolverine met Piotr's eyes and nodded. "Ya did good, kid."

Piotr squared his shoulders and nodded back, then excused himself quietly, going back to Irina's bedroom to collect the gun, cellphone, and ATM card. Irina followed him, going to her dresser and removing the locket from the egg box.

"I should give this to you, in case I don't see you again." she explained.

Piotr took the silver heart shaped locket and gently rubbed his thumb over the enameled flowers. They'd carefully cut out their school pictures and put them in over the miniature portraits of Tsar Nicholas and Tsarina Alexandra. Piotr wondered if they were still inside.

"I gave this to you with no strings. Just because we aren't together, doesn't mean I want it back. The locket is yours." He tried to give it back.

"It is a family heirloom, Piotr, and a piece of history. I accepted it expecting to marry you, now that we won't...it should stay in your family. Your heart does not belong to me. It never did."

Her lip curled, and Piotr knew they weren't talking about the locket any more. "Irina...I did love you."

"And I loved you. We care for each other, Piotr, and we will always be friends. But we were never in love."

Piotr sighed, and admitted it. "No. We weren't."

She took his hand in hers, and curled his fingers around the locket. "So. Save this for Illyana, or give it to your future wife, something old for the wedding, eh? Silver is your Katya's color."

"We haven't even been out on a date yet," he muttered, and tucked the locket into his pocket. "Irina, I don't know how to thank you for this, for taking all of us in when we had nowhere else to go."

"It was nothing, Piotr. I wish it could have been under better circumstances, but it was good to see you, and I enjoyed meeting your friends. You know if you ever need anything, you can come to me. Even if it's only to speak to someone in your own language."

"I won't forget this, Irina. And I won't let so much time pass before I see you again. I've missed you."

"And I you," she reached up and gave him a brief, chaste kiss goodbye. "Now, go off to be a hero. It suits you much better, you know."

He pulled her close and held her for a moment, then let go.

Irina waited a few minutes, until she was sure they were gone, before composing herself and going out to see to the celebrating children.

XxXxXxXxXxX

"Couple'a things Chuck didn't tell ya," Logan started to say in the elevator.

Miss Munroe said, "Logan," quietly, warning.

"They gotta know, 'Ro. I know you wanna break it to 'em gently, but these two are coming on the 'Bird. If they say something, it's too raw for the others."

"What happened?" Kitty asked in a small voice.

Ororo put a comforting hand on her shoulder. "Jean...Doctor Grey...Jean died while we were escaping from Stryker's base."

"Bozhe moi," Piotr closed his eyes, remembering the lovely teacher. Mister Summers must be shattered. He felt a little unsteady on his feet.

He'd been sketching tourists in Brighton Beach, both for the practice and the pocket money he earned when he managed to sell a sketch to the subject. Doctor Grey approached him and asked him to draw her, speaking to him telepathically while he worked, telling him about the school and reassuring him that they could arrange for him to quit working for the Vassilov family without fear of reprisal.

Doctor Grey had framed that charcoal sketch and hung it in her office in the school infirmary. He'd seen it during his physicals.

And now she was dead.

"And that punk Pyro defected on us, went over to Magneto," Logan growled.

"John did?" Kitty gasped, eyes wide.

"Yeah. Things kinda went to hell on us at the Drake place. Kid lost it."

"We saw on the news," Piotr nodded slowly. "Pyro blew up police cars."

Piotr had never liked John Allardyce. The boy had a wild glint in his eye during powers practice, whenever he was manipulating flame. Pyro was supposed to be short for pyrokinesis, the name for his power, but Piotr had known an arsonist and he recognized that taint in the boy. Pyro loved flame, and didn't care who might be burned.

"So, Cyke's holding it together. Rogue and Drake are too. I just didn't want you two asking about either of 'em. Wounds are too new, y'understand?"

Fire and Ice. John and Bobby had been best friends. Bobby's stolid boy next door personality balancing John's wilder side. And John had always been able to make Rogue laugh. His defection must hurt them almost worse than Doctor Grey's death. He left, willingly, turning his back on his friends and knowingly joining the enemy.

They reached the lobby and left the building. Headed into the park for the Blackbird. The plane had attracted a small crowd of tourists, curiously wondering if a movie was being filmed. The crowd parted quickly as the mutants came up and the hatch opened for them.

Piotr and Kitty took seats behind Bobby and Rogue for takeoff.

It was a short flight to Washington DC, and Professor Xavier briefed them on the way. They needed Kitty's phasing and computer hacking skills to break into Stryker's office and find proof of his unauthorized operation. The illegal experiments on mutants and the terminally ill. His intended plot of genocide.

Piotr was going with her in case someone tried to stop her.

They didn't get uniforms. To any observer, there was simply a tall youth walking with a much shorter girl down the sidewalk in front of the office building. Blink, and they were gone.

Kitty and Piotr hurried through the corridors to Stryker's offices.

It was after normal business hours, so they only had to worry about security and janitors, and just average security at that. Hiding in plain sight, Stryker hadn't wanted to draw attention to his activities with high clearance upgrades.

The computer system was state of the art, though. It took a while for Kitty to find her way through the passwords and security systems. Piotr hovered, nervously, keeping a lookout and watching Kitty in action, although he didn't understand half of what the screen was saying.

"Got it!" Kitty crowed triumphantly. "The most damning evidence is printing out to give to President McKenna, and I'm copying some other stuff that looked interesting to disk. Five minutes and we're out." She grinned up at Piotr as he leaned over her shoulder to look. "Impressive, ain't I?"

"You're amazing," Piotr agreed solemnly, and leaned closer for a kiss.

They spent the five minutes pleasantly, and when the disk was ready and the printer tray filled, Kitty pulled away a little breathlessly. "Okay. It's totally Sydney Bristow to be making out with a hot guy while committing espionage and all, but we'd better get moving."

"The Professor wanted to catch the President before the scheduled press conference," Piotr nodded, and they borrowed a few file folders to organize the printouts, then left as silently and undetected as they came.

Someone had to stay with the plane while it was parked in the Rose Garden, and Piotr and Kitty volunteered. They weren't officially X Men yet, without uniforms, and neither one of them was comfortable with the thought of meeting the President.

Kitty was still pouting over the fact that Rogue and Bobby got uniforms when they returned to the school. It was something to distract herself from their losses.

XxXxXxXxXxX

Time heals all wounds, life goes on, and things slowly went back to normal at the Xavier School. The mansion was renovated and redecorated. Some parents had removed their children from the school in the aftermath of the attack. A few new students were enrolled now that their beleaguered parents knew of it's existence. A few of the old ones returned again, when no other school would take them.

Scott Summers was gone. After the memorial service for Jean, he'd arranged to take a leave of absence with the Professor, and Logan silently offered the motorcycle back.

Scott was still Scott, even in his grief. Terse postcards updated them on his whereabouts. The latest one was from Florida, and said he'd hired on a fishing boat.

Logan stayed, taking over Scott's shop class. So did Kurt Wagner, adding German, Gymnastics, and Religious Studies to the curriculum.

The school needed a doctor on premises, and given the nature of the student body, no ordinary MD. Doctor Henry McCoy, Harvard geneticist, joined them.

Ororo Munroe returned to the school from running into town to do a little shopping. She flinched slightly as a falling body plummeted to land at her feet in a heap on the marble tile of the foyer. Wade lifted his head to shout, "Yep! Broke 'em both!" and grinned at her sunnily. "Hi Miss Munroe. S'okay, almost all better."

She stepped over him. Theresa Cassidy passed her on the stairs, already reading Wade the riot act. "Och, ye daft fool! When I said if you fell off the bannister you'd be sure to break both your legs, I wasn't meaning for you to try it! Hello Miss Munroe."

"It's a beautiful sunny day children, " she laughed. "Why don't you take some of that energy outside?" She took her personal purchases up to her room. No sign of Wade or Terry when she came back down to pull the truck around back, or else she'd have pressed them into service. She'd had a good day at Gaia's Garden Organic Nursery...there was a lot of planting to be done.

XxXxXxXxXxX

Piotr hummed to himself as he sorted through the spare parts bin, picking through the debris on the potting bench. A length of new tubing had already been spliced in to replace the leaking section, and now he just needed to fix the timer.

The door from the conservatory opened, and he heard Kitty gasp as the heat hit her. The greenhouse was hot and humid, which was why Piotr had left his shirt on one of the chaise lounges in the conservatory. Kitty was dressed for the weather, in white denim shorts and a pink bikini top.

"Hi Peter. Can you come out and play?"

"I have to finish repairing the watering system first."

"Oh," her face fell a little. "Can you take a break? I want to show you something."

Piotr put down a washer, and smiled, giving her a long slow once-over, letting his gaze linger. "Mn. I can see from here."

She grinned. "Not the bikini. I was down at the pool earlier. C'mon Peter. It'll only take a minute. And this is really really neat."

"Very well," he picked up a rag and wiped his hands quickly.

"Just step out into the conservatory for a minute, there's more room."

"This is not going to be involving remote control toys? Or small furry animals?" he asked warily, following her.

The conservatory ran the length of this wing, potted plants and orange trees, padded chairs, and french doors looking out at the formal rose garden, the small greenhouse at one end.

"That would have worked if Bobby hadn't left an ice slick there. And Mister Squeakers didn't even fall off." Kitty scowled, leading him to the middle of the floor. "Okay, put your hands on my shoulders, hold me, and close your eyes."

He obeyed.

The hands at his waist moved around to his back, she stepped closer...and the hands slipped down to his buttocks and squeezed.

He yelped, "Katya!" as his eyes flew open again.

She giggled. "Sorry. Irresistible impulse, couldn't help myself, really. That wasn't it. Close your eyes again, I'll behave, I promise."

He closed his eyes again, grumbling. "Something tells me I'm going to be regretting this."

"Don't get all hyper. And hold on, I hafta concentrate."

He waited, curious, but patient. He half expected another goose, or for her to do a vertical entrechat up into his arms to steal a kiss. He felt lightheaded and his stomach turned over. The heat. Maybe he should take a break, get out of the greenhouse for a while.

Nothing seemed to be happening. He started to shift his weight from foot to foot, and realized his feet weren't touching the ground. He panicked, opening his eyes looking down. "Kitty, what!"

"Ulp!"

They were floating, about two feet above the floor. He kicked instinctively, and started to tilt backward. They hit the floor with a thump, Kitty sprawling on top of him, knocking the breath out of him. She pushed herself up with a sheepish smile, brushing her hair back out of her eyes. "Sorry. I've been practicing with weights that weigh as much as you, I thought I was ready to show off."

"You can fly now?" he asked, wonderingly.

"Yup. Sort of. When I'm intangible. Professor Xavier explained it, but I don't have the physics to follow half of what he said," she ducked her head. "Pretty neat, huh?"

Piotr smiled. "I don't know the difference. I always feel like I'm walking on air when I'm with you."

Her face lit up, and she leaned down and kissed him.

"Want to make out a little?" he asked, when she pulled away.

"I don't want to get you in trouble..."

"Isn't that my line for when we stop?"

She swatted him, with a snort of laughter. "I mean the greenhouse. You're supposed to be working."

"I am taking a little break. I would rather be smooching with you than going to the kitchen for a soda," he leaned up for another kiss.

They kissed for a while. Piotr was very aware of Kitty straddling his lap, and the teensy-tiny bikini top she wore. He lowered his head and planted a kiss between her breasts. That was farther than they'd gone since she fondled him at Irina's. She murmured, and he moved back to the nape of her neck again. They kissed some more, and then Kitty pulled away and gazed down at him happily.

"I just made up a dirty joke," she informed him smugly.

He raised an encouraging eyebrow.

"Hey Peter. I know you get big and hard. But what's your power?"

"Minx," he chuckled, and pulled her down for another kiss.

A genteel cough interrupted them a little later. Kitty sprang off him, rolling over to face Miss Munroe, who was looking down at them with an amused expression.

"Oh geez," Kitty gasped. "We were...I'm...I'm so embarrassed I could sink through the floor."

"Don't you dare!" Piotr hissed, face flaming.

"Piotr, I believe you were supposed to be repairing the irrigation system in the greenhouse. Are you finished?"

The teenagers hurriedly got to their feet. "Almost," he admitted, squaring his bare shoulders and ready to take the blame.

"Why don't you get back to it, then? Kitty, I have some new plants out in the truck. Why don't you help me with them?"

She put a hand on Kitty's shoulder to guide her out the door.

There were several trays of seedlings that would go into the greenhouse. Some herbs. Ororo picked up a flat of yellow violas and led Kitty to the row of great stone urns lining the small terrace outside the conservatory. She pulled a trowel out of the first urn and handed it to Kitty as she worked the first viola out of the plastic eggcrate without breaking the roots.

Kitty dug a little hole in the dirt already in the urn, and she popped the plant into place.

Ororo sighed. Teachers weren't supposed to play favorites. Or at least, should try not to show favoritism. And these two were her favorites. Piotr...with his criminal past and deep-rooted connection to the land and growing things, not unlike her own. Kitty's quick wit and sunny nature. They were both very dear to her.

"So. You've been chasing Piotr since the day you met. It seems you have finally caught him."

"We're dating. It was the raid, y'know, how I was seperated from the other kids, and Yuri came and got me and took me to Irina's place the next morning. It made Piotr realize that he likes me like that. As much as I like him."

They worked in silence for a few minutes, and then Ororo forced herself to ask, "are you sexually active?"

Kitty looked at her and blushed. "Ro! No! We just kiss and stuff. Neck. Peter says we have to wait until I'm eighteen before we do IT...go all the way. I think he's seen, like, one too many after school specials or something. He's got this whole thing in his head that I'll get pregnant and it'll ruin our lives, because I won't be able to go to college and he'll go to jail and then get deported back to Siberia and my parents will lock me up like I'm Rapunzel or something, and remind me how much I've disappointed them if I even look like I'm doing anything but taking care of the baby and working at a fast food job. And Piotr will be working two or three crappy jobs in St. Petersburg trying to save up enough to come back to the states as an illegal alien to look for me and little Anastasia Petrova." Kitty sighed. "He's totally been reading Tabitha's romance novels and denying it, I can just tell."

Ororo laughed softly. "It is good that Peter understands that actions have unintended consequences," she noted.

"Yeah, I know." Kitty ducked her head and concentrated on patting soil around the roots of a viola. "I know, I wouldn't want a boyfriend that was pressuring me to go farther than I'm ready to. And I know I'm not ready for anything more serious than kissing."

"Very sensible. But Kitten, I'm afraid that there are school rules about public displays of affection for a reason," she reprimanded the girl gently. "It is only luck that it was I who found you in a somewhat compromising position..." Ororo frowned. "If I had been escorting a new student and her parents on a tour of the school, I'm sure you can see how awkward it would have been to walk in and find you and Piotr in such an embrace. By rights I should issue you each ten demerits and ground you."

"Oh no! Please, Ororo, I promise we'll keep our hands to ourselves from now on. We're gonna go see the new Justice League movie tonight with Bobby and Rogue and Tabby and Sam. It's gonna be so cool! Denis Leary as Guy Gardner, Michael Rosenbaum as the Flash, Eliza Dushku as Wonder Woman, and Matt Damon and Ben Affleck as Booster Gold and the Blue Beetle! We can't miss it."

"Well," Ororo relented. "I suppose being alone in the conservatory doesn't count as a...public...display of affection. This time. Consider yourself warned."

"Yes ma'am," Kitty nodded earnestly. "No more smooching on school property."

Ororo raised an eyebrow at that, well aware that Piotr would soon be moving off school property, starting his studies at art school, and made a mental note to keep an eye on Kitty's unchaperoned visits to the city in the future.

Kitty helped her finish planting the row of urns, and then she released the girl to enjoy the rest of the afternoon. She had Piotr help her unload the rest of the flats into the greenhouse and she had a little chat with him as well.

Speaking with Piotr reassured her, he definitely was one of the most responsible of the teenagers and quizzing him on his intentions toward the younger girl yielded satisfactory answers. Though he was as hormone-addled as any healthy youth, he was trustworthy and Ororo approved of the romance.

She let Piotr go off to find Kitty and finished cleaning up the potting bench, stacking trays and flats, sweeping up loose soil and seeing that everything was in the proper place.

After the humid heat of the greenhouse, she conjured up a cooling breeze, ruffling leaves and sending shed petals dancing in the air. Ororo lifted her face to the sun, and breathed in floral perfume and the green scent of growing things. Kurt had asked her about her anger once, but there were times her soul was at peace. Times like these.

She took a walk though the grounds near the house. The pool was crowded with squealing, splashing kids. Not far away, a snowball fight was in progress, Bobby Drake cheerfully arming all sides.

Artie and Rhane---in full wolf form---were playing frisbee, the lycanthropic mutant making spectacular leaps to snatch the spinning disc in midair.

It was good to see the children back to normal.

THE END.


End file.
